A miracle happened today. The light drizzle stopped and the sun came out just as we were gearing up for a quick Finished Object shoot. The gods somewhere must like my new shawl/scarf as much as I do.
The pattern was one of the first I ever queued on Ravelry, Revontuli-huivi. The yarn is Kauni Effektgarn, an Estonian 4-ply with long pattern repeats and I used 6mm KnitPro needles.
The majority of the shawl was knitted during epic bus journeys to-and-fro North-East Scotland. It was a perfect travel knit - long stretches of knitting/purling and a bit of interest ever so often. I quickly fell into a rhythm and could knit whilst keeping an eye on the ever-changing landscape. I think I would have thought this a bit of a boring knit if I hadn't been on the road. The yarn really does most of the work for you.
The pattern is well-written and well-charted. The yarn is rustic with beautiful colours - but it also nearly lifted the skin off my yarn-carrying finger (I knit Continental). I cannot imagine myself knitting Kauni (or its siblings, Aade Lõng and Evilla) at a tighter tension or for a full garment. I would need to wrap band-aids around my fingers in order to survive - and I'm not sure I'd find that particularly fun.
But, gosh, my shawl is beautiful. It blocked out very big, I love the colours and I know this will become my go-to scarf this autumn/winter. It is my favourite knit for quite some time and I feel a bit silly that I did not knit this a long time ago.
Have you seen the new Twist Collective? Oh my. I'm in love with at least four or five patterns (which puts the cat among the pigeons as far as future projects are concerned). My two must-knits are Hallett's Ledge (I have some vibrant purple Troon Tweed kicking about) and Cityscape (I might redrawn the chart so it includes some Glasgow buildings), but there are plenty of gorgeous patterns I can see myself wearing.
Also, I could kick myself. Some of my best friends have just been to KnitNation in London - and I forgot all about asking them to buy me some Wollmeise yarn. I did not want much - just one skein for a small scarf - but I completely forgot and seeing as Wollmeise yarn is normally as scarce as unicorns I probably won't get another chance (unless KnitNation happens again or I go on yarn-buying vacation to Germany - I don't know which is most likely).
Speaking of vacations, I did enjoy my mini-vacay but unfortunately it has meant that admin work has been piling up and I will be spending the rest of my Sunday filing papers and writing up reports. I think this calls for tea and buttered crumpets.