Windfalls

How about this?  I'm calling this new wip "Windfalls", as it's that time of year in our garden, with apples and pears spilling over.  But also the patterns here drop into your lap for free, from the great bounty that is Ravelry.


Basically, I am following the construction of the Summer Isles waistcoat which is proving to be a good fit.  The yarn here is a hand-dyed variegated wool called Pure Alchemy, from a company called Yarnsmith.  I bought it originally for a Swallowtail shawl, thinking it would be a good accent colour.  However, it is more than a bit loud as it stands.  The grey yarn - Charcoal on the label - had proved to be the wrong colour on an earlier project, but it is just the ticket here, where it reads as a dull olive against the orange and mutes it down.






So then, the stranded patterns.  After our visit to Whithorn my mind was running on celtic knotwork, which has meant lots of cabling before now. I do have Alice Starmore's wonderful book, but her charts are intended for many different yarns and would need some work to decipher the underlying pattern. But an advanced search on Ravelry -  Patterns Celtic stranded - threw up over a hundred colourwork options.  Adding the word "free" narrowed it to about fifteen.    Amazing.  One can nip up to the office in the back bedroom, set up this search, print off the charts and be knitting it up within minutes.  I never fail to be surprised and grateful for this resource.

The variegated orange/green falls randomly along this Celtic braid, but gives an almost 3D effect from a distance - certainly adds depth to the pattern.

This is again a pattern free to download, this time from  Patons - they seem to hve offered a kit of the yarns for a hat along with it.  This is a serious challenge to knit, as it's not symmetrical.  Using a ruler laid across it to keep track of the row certainly helped.

A Celtic Spiral design.  My fear was that it might fall over the bust - as my husband said, shades of Boudicca's breastplate.  In fact, it is moving up towards the shoulder.

This has been a surprisingly quick knit so far.  The ribbed back is in progress.  And I have some mid-blue Jaeger Matchmaker beckoning ....