Something to get your mouth watering…

At least I hope so 😉 Here is what I’ve been doing with the Nature’s Palette. Well, actually, let me just fill you in on how the yarn is. I don’t think the camera can do it justice. The colour is just stunning. The yarns are dyed with natural dyes, rather than chemical ones, so each dyelot is unique, and even the solid colours have a little varigation. This one, being redish, is really difficult to capture properly on camera, and I have one picture of about 15 that actually came close to how it looks in daylight :/ But it is a beautiful cranberry cerise red, which moves between raspberry and strawberry. Mmmmm, berries. The yarn is 100% merino, so it is supersoft, but, according to Pure Knits, it doesn’t pill because it is very tightly spun. I think the spin also has something to do with the stitch definition – it is superbly clear, yet remains soft. I love this stuff. And for the UK shoppers 😉 it is much cheaper, even with US shipping, than a lot of the sock yarns you can get here. I much prefer it to LL, if only because of the natural element, but it does feel much softer than LL, and doesn’t have that sometimes annoying twist in the yarn (I don’t know about anyone else, but I have found LL to sometimes get a bit over twisted while knitting up, and caught up on my needles). Go buy it.

Anyway, here is some chewing gum for the eyes 🙂

This first one kind of gives you an idea of how the pattern looks in the yarn in general. Can you guess what the pattern is? 😉 As I said earlier, this yarn is difficult to capture, especially in the crappy light we have in the crappy rain at the moment… DB very kindly took pics, as I couldn’t manage to get anything approximating usable myself 🙁

Here is another pic, without flash. Not sure if it helps to see the pattern a little more, but again,you can see the fit of the sock with the pattern…

Finally, this one is the closest to the true colour I can get – there is no orange in this colourway. It is definitely a cool, pinky red. I could just eat it all up. Yum. And you get a nice flat view of the pattern and stitch definition 😉

If you hadn’t guessed, this is the pattern I’ve been working on, that Leah has been testing for me, bless her (go and see the amazing felted bag she’s just finished!) 🙂 I’ve only just cast on for the second sock after all the hand pain rubbish delayed me 🙁 but I see a pattern being completed formally in the very, very near future. I just want to hear from Leah about how she feels about it first, but so far things are looking good 😀 Hopefully people will be interested in it, and it isn’t as if I’m going to charge for this, but the sense of achievement is wonderful. It may not be much in the grand scheme of pattern design, but for me, it is a first, and I like that 🙂
Ok, in other news, I finally got some new needles for the Amazing Lace knitalong 😀 They are much much better than all the other ones I have, so at last I can start working on one of the patterns, to see how I feel about them… Yay!