Here’s the thing - when you start out with a yarn as nice as this, it’s hard to make something ugly. Not that I was trying. But I’m amazed at how nicely this came out. The stitch is Checkerboard Mesh from Barbara Walker’s Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, the yarn Silk Rhapsody by Artyarns:

I highly recommend this yarn to anyone who can make the splurge. Not because it’s dreamy to work with - the more tensile mohair strand is never in sync with its partner strand of silk, making winding and knitting something of a PITA - but because, even when it’s at its most annoying, you can pick it up and hold it to your cheek for a moment and all will be forgiven. It’s that soft.

(Yes, I hold balls of yarn up to my face.)

I normally wouldn’t devote a post to something this small, but I feel the need to evangelize this fabulously weird material. Meet Noro Daria:

It’s yarn, technically, but really I would call it cord - three very taut strands of stiff cotton completely wrapped in shiny, lustrous, space dyed rayon. I love this stuff. I used it to make this little change purse:

Shiny, ain’t it? It works up in less than an hour and as a bonus, it was the perfect excuse to learn how to crochet! It may be a wee thing, but I love it all the same. I’ll be conjuring up more ways to use this cool material soon.

of a vintage pattern KAL? Here at the Kitchener Bitch?

Let me know what your ideas are, either here or at Knittyboards! Looking forward to your feedback…

It’s been an exciting few days at Kitchener Bitch headquarters. Namely, I have a new toy: the Ashford Knitter’s Loom - a 2-foot portable rigid heddle loom designed, I think, for weaving novices such as myself. I picked it up at Loopy after having eyed it in the back room for months.

The first thing I have to say is that I love it. Weaving is as hypnotic as knitting, and possibly more so. It’s immensely satisfying to weave the shuttle through the warp and then gently nudge the weft yarn into position with the beater, over and over again in a single rythmic movement. There’s Zen to be found there, in the same way that there’s Zen to be found in making the endless loops of the knitted stitch. It’s also gratifyingly fast. In just a couple of hours, i’d made a charmingly primitive ugly child’s scarf:

I’m on to my next weaving project - a see-through shawl made of widely spaced laceweight Fleece Artist mohair boucle.  I love the way it’s turning out, although I like even more the way the shawl looks when it’s wrapped around itself at the front of the loom - if I’d made it four times as thick, it would be like a lovely Chanel boucle.  I’ll have to invest in a finer reed and in a hell of a lot more mohair for that.

In other adventures, I have a bunch of finished objects to come (as soon as I can get pics) and some more exciting patterns on the way!  Next up - 40s lace gloves…

Beehive pattern no. 481 - “Handsome Morale Builders” (presumably for the boys off at war, via the miracle of black and white photography!)
Pattern after the jump…

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