One-skein project: Pretty Thing in Smitten

This one got hold of me and wouldn't let go.  I had most of a ball of Smitten (colour: soft slate) left over after determining the ball-band gauge, and I've been admiring the Yarn Harlot's Pretty Thing pattern for a while,  (Ravelry link here), and, well.  Just well.  I knit on this just about every chance I got for three days, and I love the result!

Pretty Thing was originally written for a very different type of yarn - fingering weight, and so fluffy as to be almost insubstantial.  Smitten is a DK weight silk - heavy and fluid.  And as you might expect, the results of my yarn substitution make for quite a different finished object.

Most significantly, a drapey lace fabric is never going to stand under the chin like the original cashmere blend does.  This is more of a collar than a cowl, and I'm wearing it folded over as a result.  If I were to do this again, I might take note of where the fold falls, and swap the right and wrong sides in that general region - just so that the right side of both sets of scallops shows, when worn. 

I also cut one repeat of the pattern out (around-the-way), because Smitten knits to far fewer stitches per inch than two-ply cashmere, and I knit it flat.  Because I couldn't find the right size DPNs, and magic loop makes me crazy.  I can find the seam, if I look, but it's really not obvious.

A note on blocking:  Wet-blocking silk is an interesting exercise.  Silk tends to get 'crispy' as it dries, and you need to beat it up a bit to get the blocked object to soften.  I find it fascinating that the softening doesn't undo all the careful blocking, but honest!  It doesn't!

It all takes so much longer than I thought...

OK, only one shop update over the weekend - once the photography, labelling, inventory and the rest are taken care of, dyeing the yarn seems to be the smallest part of this business - but I did get the silk listed!

'Candy', available here

During the swatching process, this yarn renamed itself from 'Shine' (I know, original, right?) to 'Smitten'.  Because I was so totally and utterly smitten with my swatch:

Swatch on 4mm needles, 'Soft Slate'

I didn't exactly choose the best background for that swatch; the colourway, Soft Slate, is a soft grey with lavender, blue and soft brown highlights; click for bigger to see the shine, the soft colours, but I can still promise you I didn't do it justice.

I love the texture of this yarn.  It's a 2-ply structure, which is quite unusual for thicker silk yarns; they're often singles.  The problem with singles is that they tend to bias in the knitting, and they are much, much more prone to pilling and other abrasion-related damage than plied yarns.  This yarn, though, is plied, and it's quite dense.  You can see that there is an almost pebbled look to the yarn; the same sort of effect you get in high-end sock yarns, and that adds its own detail to the surface texture of the fabric:

'New Growth' (my favourite greens!) - available here

I'm guessing that no-one will be too shocked to hear that I couldn't resist keeping some of this for myself.  I have a whole skein of the Soft Slate, and yesterday, I cast on for the Yarn Harlot's pattern, 'Pretty Thing' cowl (Ravelry link).  It's looking luscious.