I stopped in to see Bonne Marie Burns, and we happen to be knitting the same sweater: Love Note by Tin Can Knits. It’s a super speedy knit on US 10 needles, but the most interesting thing is that you carry two yarns together as you knit. If your colors are very similar (my wheelhouse), you know what to expect, but when your colors are wildly different, the results can be surprising!
You know mine will be purple, because purple + purple = purple. But notice how the cool purple fingering weight yarn is warmed up by that warmer purple mohair.
Bonne Marie’s screaming yellow is toned down to a rather gorgeous ochre by the gray mohair. I never would have thought to combine gray and yellow into a single yarn, but it works. Grellow for the win! That’s the power of having stash to play with, too. I only had purple and purple for my adventure.
Bonne Marie pulled open her buffet drawer and I had to laugh. Of course it’s full of yarn. What’s in your buffet? Mine has china, table linens, and flatware. But I did empty out one cupboard to use as a pie safe so Calvin can’t eat our baked goods!
I’ve split for the sleeves on my Love Note, and now I’m knitting a few rounds so I can try it on. I’ll frog it if I need to change the size. I noticed that Bonne Marie had an orange version in her buffet drawer, and she had frogged it back after swatching. She just wound the two yarns up together around the ball because she was going to re-knit them together anyway. Brilliant.
That solves my frogging problem. I was afraid to swatch too far because I have a limited amount of the purple mohair, and I was having a hard time separating the two yarns after frogging. But I’m committed to this color combination, so there’s no reason to try to separate the yarns if I’m just going to re-knit them together anyway. Perfect!
What color is your knitting this week?
PDXKnitterati 
So, I heard that if you need to frog mohair, to try and out it in the freezer first?!?! I haven’t tried it myself, but it was suggested to me.
Yes, I’ve heard this, too. But I have a very tiny freezer, and it’s so full that I can’t put anything else in it until a lot comes out! Last week I made red beans and rice with a ham bone from a Super Bowl party, and mushroom barley soup with Christmas prime rib bones. A tiny bit of space has opened up…
I didn’t find the frogging very difficult; it was the separating the two strands. But now that I’ve committed to the color combo, I think all will be well.
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I have had the pattern and yarn for this sweater forever and I so want to start!!!
You should just jump right in! It’s a pretty quick knit on big needles.
I’m second-guessing my sizing; 7 inches seems like an awful lot of ease on a short person…
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That worries me about a lot of sweaters out there right now
Remember a few years back when negative ease was used to do most of the shaping? That never worked for me, either. From one extreme to the other!
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Yes! What happened to just a nice silhouette???
Tin Can Knits has some of the best patterns, I swear! I love this Love Note pattern and it is so interesting to see what color combinations can do. I may have to pick up this pattern soon…..because, you know, I really don’t have enough projects lined up 🙂
It’s a very easy pattern to follow, and I’ve seen so many good looking ones at fiber shows. But this weekend I had an epiphany about the amount of ease specified, and I decided to re-think my size! Blog post coming soon…
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Your Love Note is looking great – love that purple combo! The grellow is also very pretty – color mixing is always so interesting 🙂
Just wait until you’ve seen what I’ve done…same color but…
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Looking forward to seeing it!