Getting To Know Ewe
I may have mentioned before that I live in a yarn desert, so last month I signed up for a Jimmy Beans Beanie Bag subscription. Receiving 4 or 5 small yarn samples in the mail, along with a cute little bag, a packet of soak, and a fun extra like stitch markers, sounded like the perfect thing. March’s Beanie Bag was printed with Shamrocks and included four yarns in happy spring colors that all followed the theme “Merino and Friends”.
The only way to truly get to know a new yarn is to knit with it, so on Saturday night I gathered up my precious little balls of yarn, a ball of sport weight Cormo wool from my stash, (Cormo is another friend of Merino) and the book Traditional Fair Isle Knitting.
Fair Isle knitting is easiest when worked in the round, and I didn’t want the cast-on edge curling up on itself, so I cast on 48 stitches with the Turkish Cast-On to create a flat tube that’s closed at the bottom, and I practiced my two-handed Fair Isle technique. It still feels awkward most of the time, but I’m getting better at it! After a few hours I had most of this done.
I just finished it up this morning by adding the opening at the top and the i-cord edging. A little light blocking helped to even out the stitches. To my surprise what I ended up with was a cell phone cozy, exactly the size of my phone. I really hadn’t planned on that, but the pattern that came with the Beanie Bag was for a cell phone cozy, so maybe it lodged somewhere in my subconscious that that was what I was making.
It was a fun little project and I got to try out yarns that I’ve never used before. I’m excited to see what’s in next month’s Beanie Bag! Is it April yet?