I had such a good time walking down Knitterly Lane with my posts on cardigans and pullovers, I wanted to mention my most worn knittery goods: shawls. Everywhere I have ever worked, the office has been cold, verging on frigid. Part of that is that my office is usually in- quite literally- cold storage, but I am also from a long line of tiny, potato loving people and so I am almost always chilly.
Multnomah, from the lovely Kate Ray pattern This is a great, single skein pattern for all those lovely hand-dyes in your stash. I wear this a surprising amount, given my usual preference for shawls to be larger than I am. The soft, neutral gray (another Sundara, natch) makes this a really seasonless accessory; it looks great with my green leather jacket and nice with my fancy black dress coat. It also looks lovely and beachy over a summer maxi dress, which has been an unanticipated benefit of all that pebbled garter stitch.
An Ishbel in Felted Tweed. I am stupidly in love with this shawl. Is the lace fancy? Not at all. But somehow, combining lofty Felted Tweed (one of my very favorite yarns) with a dead-simple pattern gets significant wear time. I wear this so often that a friend recently told me that I appeared to her in a dream, wearing this shawl and saying, "Well, of course I'm wearing a shawl. It's Felted Tweed." (I really, really love Felted Tweed.)
Color Affection in Sundara Fingering Silky Merino in Fields of Provence and Juniper Over Sage, with Tanis Red Label Fingering in Dove. I knit most of this on a trip to Canada to visit Glenna, so this has the added bonus of using souvenier yarn from a fabulous day visiting Toronto yarn stores. I love the enormous size of this: it's more than 80 inches long, and almost 24 inches deep. I can wrap it around myself several times, and the dusty, softer pastel colors look great year round. I've been wearing this a lot with the aforementioned green leather jacket, which brings out the cooler grays in the colors, making this a sophisticated topper for the days when my hair is wet and my makeup is more on my teeth than my face.
Finally, but most importantly: my Hanami. I did not knit the gorgeous, rose gold perfection I am wearing, but I did make the royal blue one on my friend. She, in turn, made the crabapple beauty on our other friend. We did a round-robin swap in 2009. Fun fact: the brunette knit the lovely orange sweater two posts ago. Knitterly love! There's nothing like wearing a handknit from your BFF.
There we have it! My favorite handknits. <3
Cold offices are totally a museum thing - I not so lovingly refer to my office as 'the icebox'. At least it gives us a reason to wear handknits all year round, right?
Posted by: kate | October 04, 2012 at 09:59 PM
How nice to see a pic of 3 Irregulars. We should plan a get-together....
Posted by: LauraRN | October 05, 2012 at 08:27 PM