A while ago, Susan (over at Damn, Knit and Blast It) gave me an idea - to knit one thing from each one of my old Rowan Magazines, and I blogged briefly about this at the time. Unfortunately, she gave me this idea about a month before I upped sticks to DC for a year (and I wasn't about to lug a bunch of Rowan Magazines over there!). But before I went, I started the project, and now I'm back and have unpacked, I plan to continue.
I started by reknitting the first Rowan pattern I ever did - Bella, a mid-1990s Kim Hargreaves pattern. It used a then-available Rowan Chenille yarn which must have been quite fine in weight as the needle size is small. I remember buying the magazine, yarn and needles from Liberty, totally blown away by how beautiful the magazine was. Coming from Australia, and in that pre-internet age, I had never seen Rowan products before, and in the knitting slump of the 1990s hadn't been doing much knitting anyway. I had done a lot as a teenager in the 1980s, with youthful knitting-mad aunties to spur me on!
I knitted the original Bella on the long flight home one Christmas (probably my second trip home after settling in the UK), and remember having difficulty with the lacy openwork pattern, and not wearing it much after I made it.
This time I used some handpainted Aracunia chenille in stash (picked up for next to nothing at All the Fun of the Fair in London), knitted it up in no time on much larger needles (5.5 mm I think) and love the result, even though the colours are a bit too earthy for me really. In fact I thought I had gifted it before I left for DC, but found it in my box of accessories when I unpacked recently, so started wearing it with both a tan mac and my black coat.
I popped out into the garden yesterday to take some arty pics of Bella, so will post one with this. Time to choose the next project, from another 90s era Rowan Magazine!
No comments:
Post a Comment