Reentry

It’s been a very busy few months but finally the fruits of many labors will begin to see the light of day so I thought it was a good time to return to this blog and start sharing them. It’s been a bit of a designing frenzy since early fall so there have been many days with a desk that looks like this:

And thus the amount of available brain capacity for activities like blogging was greatly diminished.  I was also developing and teaching a number of new classes at Gauge + Tension which took my mind in an entirely different direction.  Between swatching, sketching, pattern writing, charting, grading, sample knitting and generating teaching materials, the months have flown by at a remarkable clip.

I did manage to have a few days of rest with my family over Christmas in beautiful Maine. We made some very fine food and took some splendid walks.

And I spent as much time as I could with this guy.

And then it was back home again and back to work. So, having spent the past several months with my head down it was a pleasant discovery when the Spring Collection from Manos del Uruguay arrived and with it, my Envira Cowl. February and March are often big inspiration months for me. The lengthening days drawn me out on more walks but the wicked winter wind that continues to claw at my neck usually spurs on the need for a new form of throat armor. So why not a bright, cheery, double-thickness, colorwork cowl.

Envira is knit in Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend and it was a really eye-opening experience for me to create colorwork using such a luxurious yarn.  I most often use woolier wools for colorwork (I love Shetland wools and Brooklyn Tweed Loft) but the rich and varied Silk Blend palette led made me to this idea and I'm so glad it did.  Silk Blend is lovely to knit with and it was a joy to see the colorwork motifs emerge from such a smooth, pearly surface, so different from the way colors behave in fuzzier wools.  Everything about Silk Blend affects how colorwork looks––the fact that it's a single ply, the presence of silk, the subtlety of the dyeing process.   There's a richness and clarity to the way the colors play off one another and of course the resulting fabric, even before blocking, is delightfully soft with a sheen that practically makes it glow.  It makes me eager for further experimentation.