Yarn Crafts :: Colourwork Kerchief - About

• Pattern: Modified The Age of Brass and Steam Kerchief
• Yarn: Expression Fiber Arts / Pearlescent Worsted
• Started: 25 Mar 2024?
• Finished: 10 Dec 2024

Since making the original ABS kerchief I've been wanting to see how I can modify it, and also, I've been wanting to do some fair isle practice, so I came up with a pattern. The construction and stitch counts are basically the same as the ABS kerchief.

The yarn is...hmm. Despite my better judgement I went for a single-ply yarn again because it's really lovely and soft...and I think aside from it getting annoyingly fluffy sometimes (still sneezing from the loose fibres) that part of it was fine. But the sample photos from the listing I bought showed more variegation - it's supposed to have a noticeably lighter section in the loop - and it arrived looking like a tonal yarn. A little disappointed but kind of whatever...it's too much trouble to bring it up with the shop and I don't know if this falls under normal variance for dyeing, even if it's clearly not quite what the listing promised, to me.

Then when I wet blocked it, the dark blue bled somewhat and it turned the creamy white yarn bluish...which is not terribly obvious in the photos, but was something of a bad surprise when I pulled it out of the water. Fortunately, it got better after drying, but it really isn't as bright white as it was before I dunked it. I understand that dye can bleed, and it's probably unnoticeable to anyone who's not me, so this is also...kind of a non-issue...but I guess it's one of the things that bothered me, out of a list of things that bother me about this project that aren't anyone else's fault.

I think if anything really bothers me about the yarn, it's that the dyer seems to have pivoted really hard to using AI-generated images for yarn "inspiration" and I no longer feel comfortable buying their work, which is kind of a shame, because I like their colours a lot.

On the project itself - I made a whole bunch of mistakes...

• I forgot that M1L and M1R require twisting the stitches. I always look up how to do these stitches every time because I forget, but this time I thought I did, and messed it up. So the centre line has some holes up until the end of the big blue section (about the time I noticed), because those are loose from not twisting.
• If you look hard at the WIP pattern, there's a row in the colourwork where the stitches are really big. I left the yarn too loose on that row; after I finished I went back to that row and tugged on the yarns until the slack was evenly distributed between that and the next row (this took a long time). 
• On the last 2 colourwork rows (with the broken blue line), the pattern isn't exactly centred because I miscounted stitches and did not notice until I was on the next line and did not want to go back.
• On the same rows, there's one stitch where the blue float goes in front of the pattern instead of the back. Did not notice until I'd finished, and even then, I only spotted it when I was looking at the photos I took.

I guess on the bright side I've gained some experience in colourwork...I learnt to hold both yarns in the same hand, based on this blog post (holding both yarns in your left hand), and it worked really well. I've previously done one yarn in each hand, but the problem with that on this project in particular is that it's REALLY fiddly with the broken line rows, because I had to purl one colour and knit the other. Also it turns out I don't really know how to purl English style? There's such a long time between the starting of this project and finishing it, because I was taking ages on the purl rows, and I finished it in a couple of days when I learnt the new hold (and wanted to clear my old projects).

Anyway, I don't think I'm making this one again, but it was a good experience. I'd like to get better at colourwork...