Sometimes, you just don’t know where the knitting will take you. As part of Summer of the Single Skein, I got out all my single skeins and had a look and a think.
These two came together initially for the colour contrast. But the more I thought about it, the more stories were told in the combination.
The silver grey yarn is pure Gotland, a long wool, grown, processed and spun in Victoria for Cheryl Crosbie of Granite Haven farm. It is a 3 ply millspun and undyed. Not the smooth worsted of her usual yarns but more semi worsted.
The gunmetal blue yarn is Cleckheaton’s Superfine Merino
They are both DK weight but that is their only similarity. The combination is like David and Goliath. Granite Haven is David, from a small farm, very simply processed, unlabelled and rather humble. The Merino is Goliath with the might of a large company behind it, teams of experts involved in everything from a new spinning method to its label design.
Despite my analogy, they don’t slug it out in battle, they actually sit splendidly together, which is actually really surprising. Both are next to the skin soft, obviously the superfine is exceptionally so. You could probably use it as a dressing on burn survivors. But this Gotland is no slouch in the softie department and provides a dense sturdiness to the knitting which might be a little too soft and floppy without it.
I received the Merino as a Christmas present. I have to admit, it is not something i would ordinarily buy. I associate merino with mulesing and over processing and the overwhelming homogeneity. I was prepared to dislike it, particularly when confronted with the semiotics of its label that I felt was trying to evoke straight from the farm goodness for a highly processed product. And it is highly processed but that is only part of the story.
A week or so ago, I had a very interesting chat with the Business Manager for Cleckheaton Superfine Merino, Georgie Waters about the yarn. I hadn’t meant to chat to the Business Manager. I had just left an email enquiry about where the yarn was processed, but Georgie called me back and spent quite a bit of time answering my questions which is rather amazing customer support I reckon. This is part of the Superfine story.
Recently, many Superfine Merino farmers lost their contracts with overseas fabric manufacturers as high quality wool suiting has declined in men’s fashion. Cleckheaton decided to partner with a number of these farms and produce a luxury knitting yarn. These are specific, individual farms and unmulesed sheep. Cleckheaton intends to include information on each farm and farmer in their website information as they develop the yarn further.
Sadly, the fleeces are sent to China for scouring, processing and spinning into singles. Sadly, I think because with the support of a company like Cleckheaton, local scourers and processors could thrive or at least survive. Knitters could feel confident that environmental and labour standards were being met and carbon miles could be substantially reduced. After processing in China, the fibre comes back to Australia where it is plied, dyed and skeined at the Wangaratta Woollen Mills. The spinning and plying methods used for this yarn are apparently unique and Australian Country Spinners are looking to patent the process. It is unusual, almost a coil and highly energised.
In light of all this, I have revised my David and Goliath metaphor. I have decided to read the relationship between my humble Gotland and luxury Merino through the stitch pattern that inspired my hat design in the first place. Oakenshield Armoured is a stitch pattern developed from the plated, flexible armour designed by Ann Maskrey for the dwarf lord Thorin Oakenshield in the recent Hobbit films.
In my revised reading, the Gotland yarn is rather the oak branch that Thorin, Prince of Erebor picks up to defeat the barbarous orc, Azog at the gates of Moria in J.R.R. Tolkien’s tale of The Hobbit. The Merino is Thorin, royal and arrogantly confidence but requiring the humble strength of the oak branch to snatch victory from defeat (only in my hat, of course).
Here are my stitch pattern charts should you wish to create your own. The left chart is the main stitch pattern, the right chart is for the crown decreases.
I sized this for a small adult head of 55.5cm in circumference and repeated the pattern 18 times. Add or remove whole repeats to up size or down size, subtracting 10% of your stitch count for initial cast on and 1 x 1 ribbing. The central double decrease for the crown is centred on the edge stitch and maintains its colour pattern. After round 17, draw the yarn through the stitch loops. The hat uses almost exactly two 50 gram balls of DK weight yarn.
I share my notes with you freely for your knitting pleasure but if you would like graded sizes and pattern support, please seek out a published design by a knitwear designer…that is their genius and hard work.
