Before Christmas I treated myself to a Knitting Kit, an unusual event for me as I like to design my own garments. However I was attracted by a Norwegian Kit, called Paisley Jacket in Green by Sidsel Høivik, with the Boteh Design. It arrived quickly but I wished to change one of the colours. The pink (called red purple) was not a good match to my colouring or to the clothes I wanted to wear the cardigan with. (2) I am going to swap the one on the left.
I decided a warm red would go well and from my extensive collection of naturally dyed red skeins (50 or so just in red ) I found a possibility.
The next challenge was to find some naturally coloured wool that was as near as identical in diameter to the wool in the kit. The wool in the kit is thicker than I would normally use, akin to ‘double knitting’, but I found some Norfolk Horn from Blackbat from a local Norfolk Flock, (Wretton) that fitted the bill. I had bought 200g so had plenty to do some trials with. I made a couple of sample skeins and dyed these - based on cochineal but with modifications from my historical research. I managed to replicate very closely the colours I had in my stash skein of 4 ply yarn. I was very pleased with this and glad I keep detailed notes.
The sample skeins
I chose the ‘warmer one’ (on the left) as this to me was the one that fitted my criteria.
The next challenge was scaling up from dyeing 10g to dyeing 100g. I wanted a consistent colour and, if you are a dyer you will know it is far easier to dye a variegated skein than one that is a solid colour! I thought back to my many years of learning and teaching science and realised how useful this is to me when dyeing. I split the wool into two 50 g skeins so the yarn had plenty of room to move at each stage in the dye pans. Very little colour came out in the rinsing stages, another good sign.
The red I decided on with the rest of the kit
In the meantime I checked through the knitting instructions, making swatches with both the Norwegian wool and the Norfolk Horn wool. I also altered part of the design of the front slightly, involving lots of calculations and drawing on graph paper, (3) and reduced the width of the bottom of the sleeves considerably.
Finally, now I can start the knitting.
Notes:
(1) For those not in England we started Lockdown 3 on 5th January. On Monday (March 8) we began the path out of lockdown (called Roadmap). So Yesterday children went back to school, you can sit on a park bench and have a coffee with a friend and each care home resident can have a named visitor wearing full PPE. There are gaps between each ‘release’ so later re-openings will be driven by the data. If all is well Step 2 will begin no earlier than 12 April. If you would like to see the full Roadmap this is the link: covid-19-response-spring-2021
(2) I trained as a colour consultant some time ago and the knowledge of this has been invaluable. More information about this on my website at advanced-colour
(3) The Boteh at the front of the cardigan was being cut off at the neck and this feature attracted my eye....not in a good way.
The original
So I have re-charted this section so the Boteh design should end just below the neckline in my version.
Fingers crossed!
