Girasole (ravelry, pattern) has captured my imagination! It feels like it's been a while since a pattern has done that... I did all of my baby boy knitting planning a few months ago and have been very focused on that. Many patterns have caught my eye of course, but I haven't really allowed myself to think about starting a non-baby project. Of course, I have enjoyed the baby knitting, and it's not going to be stopping any time soon, but I'm starting to think it might be a wise luxury to allow myself a project or two for myself as well, so it's not quite all baby all the time around here.
Plus, it's not entirely unrelated to the baby - we finally picked out a sofa bed for the baby's room (yes, the baby's room is huge and is in fact the largest room in the house, so it's more of a family/baby's room). Due to cost and availability, we ended up picking out something a little different to what I had been imagining - it's dark brown leather, but not expensive so it's kind of shiny and, basically, begging for a beautiful hand knit blanket to be draped over it. I think that Girasole would be a) perfect and b) amazing. I've yet to knit any of brooklyntweed's designs and by all accounts, everyone is raving about not just what a great project this is but what a great pattern it is.
The only thing is, what yarn? I know brooklyntweed chooses his yarns very carefully, and as this is a self-published pattern, no one else was involved in his selection for this pattern, so I'm tempted to go with the Cascade Pastaza he used. It comes in the perfect color too - a beautiful heathered blue (0085). The thing is, it's 50% wool, 50% llama, basically pretty much exactly the same as Classic Elite Montera which I used for the asymmetrical wrap and... didn't love it. It was a little hairy for my liking. The fact that it was dark brown probably didn't help. I'm thinking of giving it another chance and swatching with it to see what I think. But really I'm thinking I should probably go with something different... but what? Possibly Beaverslide Dry Goods McTaggart Tweed in Big Sky Heather... but it's out of stock.
And colors are so hard online too... should I just order 1 skein to see if I like it?
Or do I give up on blue and go with a natural color of Cascade Eco Wool? (I don't really like any of the Eco+ colors.)
Or Jamieson's Shetland Heather Aran - but what color?!!
Obviously, I need to think about this more... but if you have any suggestions, please let me know!
i think the Jamieson in Ivory would be nice. this looks like a large project and something you will have for a while. might be around for a long time and Ivory will be hard to get tired of.
Posted by: michele | Thursday, February 05, 2009 at 11:25 PM