7.31.2007

For the love of Hempathy

I love Hempathy; it is the best new yarn I've tried this year. For those of you who haven't seen this lovely yarn, it is produced by Elsebeth Lavold and is 34% hemp, 41% cotton, and 25% modal. The hemp provides strength, the cotton provides softness and the modal helps prevent stretching and together they create a yarn with amazing stitch definition. The other great thing about hempathy is that all of the fibers take the dye a little differently which gives the appearance of a light heathering.

I have been casting on swatches with the same ball of hempathy for over a month now looking for just the right project for this yarn. After several swatches I discovered that hempathy's excellent stitch definition and is perfect for lace. That was it, I could finally make the branching out scarf from Knitty that I have been planning forever. Only problem was when I swatched for the scarf, I didn't like the way it looked in the color of hempathy I had. Thanks to Ravelry I was able to look up the yarn and see all of the projects people have made with it. My favorites are the bag from No Sheep for You, a pair of breeze socks from Knitty, and the swallowtail shawl from last fall's Interweave which was already on my things to knit list. Although I liked all of these projects, I was still in the lacey scarf mindset so I decided to consult a few stitch dictionaries and design my own.

For the last week I have been working with a vintage fern lace pattern that I love. It looks better right side up so I am going to make the scarf in two pieces and graft them together. There is also a bit of a problem with the space between the repeats. I have rewritten about 6 times and finally decided to let it be on Sunday. Yesterday I was flying for most of the day and I managed to get about 16" of the scarf finished. I want a 60" scarf, but I only have two balls of hempathy so we will just have to wait and see how long the scarf ends up.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's on - http://veganpal2.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

Your scarf looks beautiful so far! Great job coming up with your own design, and I like the seed stitch edges. I am really excited to try Hempathy so I appreciate your insights on it.

Cass said...

Ooo it looks GREAT! I adore Hempathy too- so soft and natural feeling. I'm doing a scarf as well...

Unknown said...

Really gorgeous!