In December, a friend suggested that I advertise custom knitting services on the website of an organization we are both active in (the North American Guild of Change Ringers). She had a lovely idea to have custom knits available with the organization’s logo, and I designed a chart so it could be knitted. I was surprised at how long (about 10 hours) it took me to get the chart looking how I wanted it to in Excel. After all, I was just tracing! Still, I’m pretty happy with the result. I also decided to offer custom knitting of change ringing method scarves as well, using Asher Kaboth’s A Scarf of Cambridge Major as the base. Asher even offered to make new charts for me if someone wanted a non-Bristol or Cambridge scarf.
Soon after the notice went up in the “Store” section of the website, I got my first two orders, one for a child’s hat with the NAGCR logo and one for a scarf of Cambridge Major.
For the hat, I used Knitpicks Shine Sport, since I needed something fairly fine-gauged in order to have enough vertical space for the logo. This yarn was recommended to me by a friend who knits a lot for her daughter, and said it was her go-to yarn for kids knits because it’s so washable and wears so well. At the time we were having this conversation, she was visiting, and happened to be working on a design of her own using this yarn. It seemed soft to the touch, and like it would be nice to work with, but it never really came up again until I was searching for something for this hat. It really was quite nice to work with, and I’m generally not a fan of cotton. The one problem I had with it is that it’s quite slippery, so the fairly involved intarsia pattern wasn’t necessarily a good fit for the yarn.
The scarf I was a little nervous about. I’ve never gotten very into cabling, and the hat I just finished didn’t really endear the technique to me. I just cast on yesterday, but my fears have evaporated. The pattern is very well written and the cables are ridiculously satisfying. The pattern calls for cabling on both sides, which slows things down some (I’ve just finished the fourth change) but it’s really delightful to work on. Contributing to that, of course, is the yarn. It’s Rowan Cocoon, in a lovely dark mauve (812 Bilberry). Not only is the color wonderful, but this yarn is amazingly soft and buttery to work with. This picture mostly captures the color:











