Lookee here

Still thinking about how to use the variegated lace yarn, I have been cheered by Ginny, who left a comment about this very thing. She called my attention to "Tricotomania", and the interesting discussion of knitting lace with variegated yarn to be found therein. This knitter is using some variegated yarn to knit the "Concert in the Park" shawl (available from Blackberry Ridge). She has some pictures of the beginning of the shawl and others of the finished article. As Ginny says this yarn appears to work very well with this pattern. None of the things I've tried with this yarn has been a square shawl from the centre out, so this may be something to bear in mind for the future.

However, I do not know how much time there will be for messing about with lace and variegated yarn in the near future, for yesterday this arrived:



"This" is yummy yarn - 20% Cashmere; 40% Angora; 40% Lambswool - you can imagine how that feels - from Shilasdair. It came to me via London, to be made into a cardigan with vertical stripes, at the request of a non-knitting lady, who had my telephone number from the woman at Burford Needlecraft.

There is a pattern with a "sketch" to show the finished article and very sketchy it is, too. The pattern is not on Shilasdair's web site so I cannot show you what I am aiming at (even if I knew myself).

The decision on the border of the Romance Shawl has been taken. At the suggestion of Jane in my LYS I plumped for Appleton's Crewel Wool in a sort of raspberry shade for the dark border and I am going to leave the body of the shawl in the original white. I took several photographs of the shawl but the colour bore no relation to the reality in any of them, so I thought it was pointless to post them. I searched high and low to find a representation of the colour (946, if anyone is remotely interested) but failed. Can't say I'm really surprised given my difficulty in getting a decent representation of the colour. I'll try to get some more pictures later.

If you wish to see one of our raw materials in the flesh (so to speak), do not miss the new BBC cartoon "Shaun the Sheep" - he is hilarious.