A New Hope

My yarn parcel from Blue Moon Fiber Arts finally arrived. It contained (among other things that we'll talk about another time) three big beautiful skeins of their Woobu yarn (a wool & bamboo blend) in the colour Jengu, which is one of their Spirit colours, thusly named because it is a sort of 'barely there' colour, just a pale pale tint. The idea came upon me a while back to use one of these colours to make an aran sweater, one that is almost but not quite the traditional natural colour of sheep's wool.


I wanted to make the chic little aran sweater (ravelry) designed by Michael Kors for Vogue Knitting Holiday '05 (yes I am four years behind in my knitting queue... what's your point?) I made a handful of generously sized swatches (very out of character for me, I know) because the gauge of my chosen yarn is different than the recommended, and because the size I'm making is one not included in the pattern. After a needle change and an extensive knitting/measuring of the various stitch patterns, I finally cast on for the front, yesterday morning.

I had to make charts for the three stitch patterns, since there are only written directions in VK. My chart cheat sheet is only in the photo so you can see how the yarn is just baaaarely blue. It is slightly variegated, but I'm not sure if it's apparent in the picture or if I'm just imagining it because I know it's there. The yarn itself is soft and sproingy. Enough bamboo to make it shine and give it some weight, but still a lovely soft and elastic wool. And the skeins are huge. I couldn't even use my ball winder, since they are so big. I wound one whole skein by hand the day they arrived, and was shocked at the size of the ball. Don't believe me? Here is a photo of it beside a well-known landmark, to give you some idea of the size:

Huge.

I have dubbed the sweater the Jengu Woobu Aran, which I think is great mostly because it sounds like something George Lucas would come up with. (I may be a geek, but at least I'm consistent.)