Colors

When I was in Kentucky earlier this year, I got a copy of the book, "Poems of Color: Knitting in the Bohus Tradition" by Wendy Keele.  I'd heard of this style of knitting but didn't know too much about it.  Reading about it and seeing the patterns made me absolutely want to knit one (or 10).  The one that intrigued me was one that has a solid color body and a yoke knit with a number of shades of a color, sort of shimmering back and forth through the shades.  I'd been wanting to play with blending colors with my hand cards (since I don't have a drum carder) so this seemed like the perfect project.

I decided to do the body in red and do the colors shaded from a yellowish white through to red and back.  Seven shades.  Like this:

To add to the project, I decided I needed to spin this yarn in the proper woolen manner, which I'm not very good at.  The base fiber I used for these colors was blue-faced leicester which I found to be really too long a staple to spin very well from the rolag.  You may disagree but keep in mind my lack of experience is a factor here. 

I have been practicing other than these skeins with spinning from the fold and spinning from rolags and I think I'm getting better but I definitely need to get some help.  When I get some time I need to hunt through YouTube to see some examples of people spinning woolen from rolags because I want to be a little better before I start spinning for the body of this sweater.  I reckon I'm going to need at least 1,200 yards of the main red color for the body.  Best way to learn is to have a goal, though, so I'm hoping my technique will improve with practice.

Back to the book, the thing I love about this book is that for each of the 7 or 8 styles they have patterns for, each style has a pattern for pullover, cardigan, jacket and hat.  I love the flexibility that gives you to explore each pattern.  If you want to explore Bohus Stickening (Bohus Knitting) more, start here or do a search on it and see examples of the patterns. Warning:  You'll definitely want one!