Ever since I bought Wendy Keele’s “Poems of Color, Knitting in the Bohus Tradition”, I’ve hankered after a ‘Blue Shimmer’. Pullover or cardigan, it doesn’t matter!
The book was released in ’95, so that’s a long time to wait on a sweater, but the kit is expensive, and I need my luxuries to be frugal.
What quelled this Bohus desire (actually the desire to knit *any* sweaters) was discovering secondhand cashmere sweaters years ago at Goodwill and on Ebay. Every other year or 2, I would spend $45 to $60 and get 3 new-to-me cashmere sweaters, to replace the ones that were falling to bits. I still kept the bits going with patches and mending, and would relegate them to wearing to bed. If you’ve never worn a cashmere sweater to bed, instead of a cotton or cotton blend top, you’re definitely missing out!
The only way to get sweaters as soft as cashmere, is with baby alpaca or angora, both of which are pricey, so I put sweaters out of my mind.
What made me think of Bohus again was reading Meg’s blog post recently about the new-ish “Bohus Stickning på nytt, The Revival”, by Viveka Overland.
Yes, an 8-yr old book isn’t new, but it is, compared to the books in my library! It seems, though, that the first edition is sold out – I can’t find it anywhere. I can only hope they are planning to reprint it.
But, it got me thinking. Specifically about the leftover skeins of Yarn Undyed’s (non-superwash) superfine merino DK and baby alpaca DK in a natural white, which I bought to weave a couple batches of winter scarves, along with Valley Yarns’ Becket, Sunderland, and Hampden - all beautiful yarns, the latter two of which are especially soft, and purchased during one of Web’s 30% off sales. I was saving them for more weaving projects, that iss, until now.
I have a few skeins of lt. grey, med. grey, a deep blue, and charcoal in the Sunderland and Hampden, which get the same 6.5 sts/1” gauge as the 100% baby alpaca DK. I may need to add more lt. grey or perhaps a fawn/sand – I won’t know until I swatch a few ideas to see what the final design needs in order to sing.
The majority of the sweater, however, would be in 100% baby alpaca, and, of course, I’m questioning the wisdom of doing this, unless knit snugly enough. All this softness, though, is yummy, so, I may go for it, regardless.
As it turns out, the superfine merino DK works best at 5.5 sts/1”, where the baby alpaca (with the same yardage) is denser/thinner and knits at 6.5 sts/1”, as would a sport wt.
If I was just knitting stockinette, the gauge difference would be an issue, but, all the finer yarns will be in the stranded yoke pattern, so the overall fabric thickness of the yoke and the body will be similar, so long as the st count is adjusted at the transition.
As I don’t have the lovely blues and teals needed for the “Shimmer”, my eye then turned to “The Large Swan”, another beautiful design, where the colors I have might work better, although I have less colors in total. Part of what makes Bohus designs so beautiful is the total # of colors used.
But I also really like “Regnmoln - Rain Clouds Pullover”, which looks similar to the “Red Palm”, or “The Mists”. I’m especially fond of that effect, as no matter the color used, the simple pattern just *glows* – it’s so striking!
So, I have a fair bit of configuring to do. If I do decide to rework a Bohus into a DK wt. gauge, it will also be affected by having less colors to shade, and the fact that i never work top down, only bottom up, so I’ll need to reconfigure where the purl sts go, as the (adjusted) yoke chart will be worked upside down from the usual Bohus top-down method for yoke sweaters.
All in all, it will be a good mental exercise, if not actually mental, although we knitters are used to adjusting designs, right?!
And, it will still be special. LOL, if I actually stick with making an adjusted Bohus, instead of doing what I am usually inclined to do, and that is design my own pattern, in the Bohus genre. Which I have already embarked on! It is a genre in which I have, thus far, only made 2 designs, so there is much more exploration that can be done.
I’ll re-post when I get these niggly details worked out. In the meantime, i can dream of a lovely, super soft, yoke-patterned sweater!
Onward!
Dawn
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