Enter Prudence shawl, slightly altered successor of the simple mohair shawl, introduced in this post, before 2007 collage. Simple eyelet borders added just right amount of prim prettiness.

Handpainted yarns are amazing! I indulged myself with some beautiful alpaca-silk-cashmere blend from Pigeonroofstudios. The picture does not do justice to that gorgeous material.

Oh, crocheting makes so portable little projects. I’ve almost forgot the delight of this craft. This particular project has zero creativity in it – I copied the idea and the yarn choice directly from
Windloop. But I absolutely love the idea and these particular shades of Kureyon, they actually don’t look good on the yarn ball (sweet pastels interrupted with some dirty gray and muted brick), but the self striping quality of Kureyon and this pattern are simply made to each other. The beauty of this garment reminds me the Rivendell set of Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Some more stuff from Japan… …this lovely olivey shade of Araucania Ranco looks pretty nice knitted up with this clever japanese lace rib pattern.

I’m having a new Twinkle fever cycle. Twinkle’s Town & Country Knits is published tomorrow, and I’ve pre-ordered it. And I have found three very promising candidates for subbing Twinkle Soft Chunky – a lovely yarn, but not available in Europe. The tried and tested one is Katia Nordic, a Spanish yarn, I’d be very happy to find some European on-line shops selling this. At least I can get it from Tallinn. And then there will be Garnstudio Polaris. I haven’t even seen this yet, but I know Eskimo very well and love it. So this should be good stuff. My latest discovery was Gedifra Highland Alpaca – and this yarn is available in Helsinki, at Fiina Neule and widely in Europe.

Highland Alpaca and Soft Chunky are almost identical weight: Soft Chunky 200g 83m, Highland Alpaca 100g 41m. And they look same – but Gedifra has additional luxury bonus factor from that generous alpaca content (50%)! I like Gedifra colourwork in general and fortunately this yarn, too, has many beautiful shades. I really like that subtle grayish tint of this ecru shade, I would describe this yarn “bone white”.

More yarn shopping from Fiina Neule, I happened to pick up these two amazingly soft balls of Zitron Nimbus organic wool – and could not leave them behind…

That blue Soft Chunky (shade Haze) seen on that comparison picture I ordered for Urchin Beret: the fastest knit on the earth. I casted on one evening, went to sleep and finished the beret in the morning while drinking my breakfast cup of coffee. Now I have some lelftover yarn to really compare to those subs…

Oops, sorry ’bout that picture, this time there were no good shoots…

This one I blame about my messed up schedule… …the pattern will be out soon. Can you guess what it is?

At first I was eyeing on Laura Zukaite’s Essential Tank Top (at Ravelry) but then I thought again and decided to design something by myself… …can you see the theme, me, myself and I…

It will be a lacy ribbed T-shirt, very transparent, suitable for layering or for very brave souls (not meaning yours truly). The construction and the shape will be simple but I have some neat ideas for details.

Yarn is Colourmart chocolate mousse coloured cobweb cashmere silk, about 3000 yards in one cone! I can tell you that knitting three strands of cobweb together is not always fun…

My yarn diet is over, sort of. I have no intentions to extend my yarn stash to new proportions – but I don’t need to say “no” to every temptation from now on. I can give in delicacies like this:

Yarn is Ilu’s wool-bamboo-mohair handpainted sock yarn. I love the drapey feel of this stuff and those delicate yet earthy colours.

I decided to start a clothes shopping diet, but boy that will be hard this autumn.

Young finnish designer Hanna Saren will have her collection for local high street clothes shop
Seppälä – and I love it to the bits. Pay a visit if you are in Finland around 6th of October.

I really like those accessories, but there are some very sweet clothes, too.

And later this autumn there will be Comme des Garçons collection for H&M. I do have a soft spot for Rei Kawakubo designs – and I have been relatively satisfied to all H&M designer collaboration clothes I’ve bought so far.

The collection looks surprisingly daring and uncompromized (more images). If you can get over with that rather gloomy styling there are several great separates and some really great deconstructed or interestingly detailed jackets. How lovely would that cropped one look over a simple gray knit?

Well, my dressing inspiration has been quite different, lately: seventies rules! I have this great pair of pretty old Diesel bell bottom jeans (yes, you have seen them several times before) and lately they have felt just right. Well so right that they are starting to fall apart – why are the jeans at their best just before they come apart?

Oops, accidentally twisted my shirt – but you get the idea…

I don’t match my accessories often, instead I try to balance the overall impression with them and add some interest.

There is one serious summer knitting madness going on. I guess that the one knit only -restriction when knitting Chevron Sweater backfired a bit .

Habu cashmere top
I wanted to do something useful from this lovely yarn.

So this is the body of sheer tank top, excellent to layer over other garments. 3,5 mm needles, but the knitting is quite fast. There is no purling involved, I just turn around to create the texture.

Rust brown wrap top
Almost finished! I only need to reconsider the edging, the pattern I firs picked does not look nice knitted with Muskat. Still don’t know if this will be decent or not…

Another Montego Bay
Since I was knitting my first Montego bay I have dreamed of knitting one with original Handmaiden yarn. I really love how the suble colour shifts of periwinkle Sea Silk work in the original. Well, sometimes the wishes come true! I met a Ravelry friend on the beginning of July – and she brought me a lovely ball of Handmaiden Silk Maiden, even more luxurious yarn than Sea Silk. Thank you so much, Carrice!

That turquise colourway is so beautiful.

Changeling -copy
I have to admit that I find Anthropologie knits often more inspiring than patterns in knitting magazines. So if one had some skeins of beautiful suri-merino in ones stash and Anthropologie shows this kind of lovely knit for autumn, what can a girl (supposedly a knitter) do? Isn’t it a crime they won’t provide the pattern as well? That little tangly piece of cables will be so much fun to knit! Love the unconventional construction.

Olive Grove socks
Sometimes the inspiration is easily drawn from beautiful yarn alone! Araucania Ranco (Ravelry) feels so soft, and I really love these handpainted almost solids with subtle but noticeable colour shifts.

That olive tone is so yummu… …my new socks might have some vines and leaves incorporated…

Striped Noro scarf
I’m certainly not an early adopter with this but one certain Kureyon colourway just forced me to join the Noro striped scarf craziness.

I pre-ordered the Nicky Epstein Crocheting on the Edge, the book finally arrived – and I like it.

Unlike Knitting on the Edge this one has nice charts of every pattern. There are again few patterns for whole garments.

And I have to say that I really like that circle cape. On the other hand that small capelet would be excellent reason to spree to some Tilli Tomas Swarowski-silk.

And then I made an one night trip to Tallinn, Estonia. Estonia is well known from traditional colouwork knitting. Considering that it might be a small surprise how small selections of Estonian wool is available there.

I would have preferred a bit different shades… …for colourwork… …but these probably end up regular socks…

…this is not Estonian. Thick wool from Katia will probably be a Twinkle scarf one day.

If somebody wonders why there is nothing happening in this blog lately, you can blame the Chevron Sweater. I decided to concentrate on knitting it and just it. And because it is boring, I’m not too surprised that all the other activities seem to be so much more tempting…

I usually don’t concentrate on one knit, but this one was in too great UFO danger zone, especially considering the yarn investments (I tried first with Yeoman suggested in the pattern, then with this Colourmart silk – and end up ordering another green for one stripe). Silk yarn in its all loveliness is not really fun to knit. I don’t mind the unstretchiness of it, but it splits like there is no tomorrow. And talk about hiding those split plies to smooth silk surface…

But I’m quite curious about the result, so there is a positive side on this project, too!

The first sleeve is almost finished. I have to say that half of the body is knitted with these sleeves, so no wonder it takes time…

I had a yarn diet, too, but I slipped a bit to get some motivation to knit the chevron. I will make another hippy pair of socks with this lovely and quite tranquil shade of Silk Garden Lite (#2021).

There was also some Wendy’s yarns on my LYS, I especially liked Supreme, mercerized, but not too hard cotton. This lovely cool beige shade with mauve undertones really caught my eye. Cardigan, perhaps? I have only one ball of this for swatching purposes… …just waiting for inspiration!