Our new Chesterfield/couch/sofa arrived this past week. At long last the livingroom is starting to come together. So, what's a girl to do but dive into the yarn stash in search of just the right colours to make an afghan that goes with this lovely new piece of furniture. A new colourful afghan will be great for snuggling under this coming winter with a good book or a great movie. The background colour of the sofa is a soft sage green, and the pillows are a brocade with dark wine red running through them. This grouping is what I've come up with and I think it will work well.
I have cast on 215 stitches. The plan is to knit lengthwise in garter stitch which will make the afghan reversable. It will also be fringed as I go along. I want the focus to be on colour rather than stitches.
One of the yarns I chose from my stash is sari silk from Nepal. And it was a beast to roll into a ball from the twist! Sari silk yarn is actually warp ends from the big factory looms on which are woven silk material for sari's in Nepal and India. Some bright soul seeing these discarded ends on the factory floor had the idea to sweep them up and give them to spinners to spin into knitting yarn. Great idea, gorgeous colours, and a pretty soft hand. However - all these sari silk yarns are single ply, thick and thin, and all spun in one direction which means they twist pack on themselves like nobody's business. They also have the odd twig or bit of paper spun into them - after all they started out as floor sweepings didn't they.
So, there I was, merrily rolling the first skein into a ball and watching with horror as the skein became a bigger and bigger knot. It looked like a bird's nest and I had to cut the yarn and start again twice, but the beast is now tame and ready to knit with and all the chosen yarns are in my work basket waiting for their turn on the needles.
