Today it's time for the second installment of my swatch diaries series- brioche!
This summer I've been working on the gorgeous Briochealicious shawl by Andrea Mowry and it's been such a fun project. I've been wanting to try brioche knitting for ages and this seemed like the perfect introductory project- simple enough for a newbie like me and not so overwhelming thanks to the garter stitch panels in between. Not to mention it's wearability- and the fact that it's simply stunning.
Okay so onto my swatch: I used Tosh Merino Light (from Madeline Tosh) for this project (colorways: Antler, Glazed Pecan, Heartbeat and Venetian) purchased at Valley Yarns in Surrey back in March. I also took Nancy Marchant's brioche class on Craftsy back in June to give me a little more confidence in mastering this stitch. I would recommend that to anyone feeling intimidated by Brioche.
In the Craftsy class I made a swatch, learning both brioche knit & purl stitches as well as one and two color brioche. It was such fun and really prepared me well for knitting this shawl.
The funniest part of all this is that I don't actually have a photo of my swatch. When finishing it, I was too excited and cast on my shawl immediately, thinking I'd just snap a photo later. But I can't find it! So sad! But anyways, I still wanted to share about this swatch & project, so the photos of my WIP will have to do!
Have y'all tried brioche? What's been your experience with it?
Things have been pretty quiet in these parts lately. My knitting has recently been filling in the cracks of my days, taking a backseat to a few other big projects, most of which I'm not quite ready to share about yet. That being said I've got a few lovely projects on the go (though it's taken me ages to finish any...) and I've been working with really amazing yarns, some of which I've only recently discovered.
And so I thought it might be fun to start a little log- a diary of sorts, detailing some of the yarns (and stitch patterns!) I'm working with in the form of swatches.
Up first I'm sharing about one of my very favorite yarns- Quince and Co Owl. I love all the Quince yarns I've tried but this is by far my favorite. It's a dreamy blend of 50% American wool and 50% New Zealand Alpaca, shown above in the Abyssinian colorway (undyed) and in the top photo in Canyon, a lovely soft shade of pink.
I adore wool/alpaca blends, they're one of my favorite fiber blends to work with. Alpaca is just so soft and lovely but I find on it's own, it creates a fabric that's a little to dense and heavy for my taste. Pair it with good wool and it's just the perfect mix.
The swatch (shown in progress) in the photo above is chevron layette stitch, with a few moderations made by your's truly. It was originally intended to be a new pattern design, but I just haven't been able to get my ideas to translate to the needles as I was hoping.
So I think I'm going to turn this lovely yarn into a pair of mittens (yes- always mittens). I'm thinking either the Woodland Tales mittens by Melody of Mandarine's or maybe I'll save it for a pair of WOODS mittens come late Fall this year.
