Butternut Woolens

Pleasure, just shear pleasure from start to finish. I found the skirt on sale at a boutique near the fancy grocery store. It's silk, it fit, I loved the color, but I didn't know quite what to wear with it. A woolen sleeveless tank tunic seemed like a good idea. In the process of creating the red-violet dye, I discovered a green and blue that seemed to balance the red-violet and would make the tunic also work with jeans.

I dyed the Targhee combed top to give 3 different, but coordinated yarns. By separating the roving into 3 colors and spinning and plying each color separately, I got 3 different tweedy yarns that look beautiful together because each has bits of the others. The yarn was enchanting, I kept spinning until I had done 4-4oz hanks. It's hard to describe spinning this French combed Targhee other than to use cliches. It really does spin like butter. Smooth, even staple, perfectly cleaned and combed, very slightly lustrous, lively in the hand.

About this time I read Scarf Style and liked Kathleen Power Johnson's Lady Eleanor Entrelac Stole, but I wasn't wild about the photo in the book, the yarn looked kind of ho hum gray. Then I saw a Lady Eleanor draped over the back of a sofa in Sara's Knot Another Hat yarn shop in Hood River. If I remember correctly, the main color was navy blue with tweedy bits of other colors and something in me went, "Yeah, that's right." I think what I liked about that Lady Eleanor was how understated it was. It was just a navy blue wrap folded over the back of the couch, but the entrelac added interesting texture. Together with the tweedy yarn the effect was simple elegance.

I had always wanted to try entrelac, but rather than learn this technique on a garment that would require shaping, I decided to learn it on a scarf based on the Lady Eleanor.

I followed Johnson's pattern in Scarf Style, but made mine smaller. I ignored gauge, instead working with a needle size appropriate for the handspun yarn and working several different triangles until I had the narrower width of a scarf. I broke off and added a new color at each tier alternating red-green-red-blue from one end to the other. Rather than using knotted fringe, I crocheted a simple chained edging.

This is the Quitobaquito colorway on American-grown Targhee wool, named after an oasis in Organ Pipe Cactus National Park, Arizona. It's available in the Butternut Woolens Fiber Shop in the sidebar for $15.85 ea. I used bits of 4 hanks, but the finished scarf only weighs 12.8 oz and measures 15" x 54" without the edging, therefore 3 hanks would be perfectly fine. A thinner or shorter scarf could easily be worked with 2 hanks. Hats, mittens or the Quant entrelac headscarf at Knitty could be worked with 1-4oz hank, as would the Annetrelac socks. For a small-medium long sleeved entrelac sweater, figure 4-5 hanks. Tanks and tees in larger sizes would also be about 4-5 hanks. This is one of the colorways I can repeat predictably, but as is always the case with hand-dyed yarns, buy one more than you think you'll need.

I'll have the Quito scarf at the Madrona Fiber Arts Retreat next month if you'd like to see it.