I found this lovely Amazon butterfly early this fall, and said to myself, ‘Self, you should make something like that for club’. What a challenge. The magnificent blue….not too blue, but not too bold, either. The lacy brown throughout, and the spots of red with incidental purple.
To meet the challenge, I looked for supplies. Originally I would have chosen mixed BFL for the fiber, but the brown in that didn’t quite have the contrast I wanted, and I was looking for something a bit luxurious as a Christmas treat for Club. Voila, a new fiber…..
merino wool blended with dyed black silk. A lot of contrast, and a bit of something special. Perfect. I mixed up that blue, and pulled a few random places to apply the red, and let it spill over to blend with the blue. There will be more optical blending of the two colors when you spin this. I’d suggest either spinning from the fold, or stripping down closer to your finished yarn grist to keep the two fibers together….otherwise you’ll have a section of yarn with mostly silk, followed by one of mostly merino.
The yarn….well, there’s a story. I was looking for something like the merino/silk that had the contrast built in. And lookie, a sock yarn with one ply Merino and the other ply Baby Alpaca. Baby Alpaca. Yeah. I was totally overcome and ordered it. The contrast looked good in the skein, but the baby alpaca had another plan (as youngsters are wont to do). It took up that blue just as nice as you please, and wouldn’t you know it, you can barely tell the difference between the plies. So, I had to add on the brown. I made 3 randomly placed ‘eyes’ to keep predators away from your lovely soft butterfly yarn. They will mix in nicely in your project. If knitting socks (or anything else), be aware that this is NOT superwash yarn. This might be a good yarn to try a cowl pattern, goodness knows it has been cold enough lately to need one.
Is your New Year’s resolution to break out of your comfort zone? Try new colors and new yarn and fiber every month in Tiger Club….we are accepting new subscriptions right now!
