ishbel beret

A finished object on top of my bed and it's been so nice to have another cover as well as the sheet the last two nights.  This is the second Ishbel beret from Ysolda Teague that I've made.  It didn't take long, flew off the needles.  I think this one will go to a small granddaughter.

It's made from fingering weight pure alpaca from Katie at wired for Fibre.  I love Katie's yarns, they are lovely and the service is great too.  It's good to have her back selling again.

This was featherlight and soft to knit with.  The skein had 310 m for 100 gm.  I weighed the remainder when I had finished and found I had used about 100 m or 33 gm.  The band is a hem, done on 3 mm needles and the lace was done with a 4mm Knitpicks Harmony  circular.  The size was the smallest given, 18" in the pattern.  The band is fairly small in real life and I hope it will fit the youngest granddaughter.  I'm doing socks for her bigger sister from Ailsa's new muted pink sockwool, so thought something different would be good.

The pink of the light pink throw on my bed has given the wrong tone to the beret.  The lower picture is much more true to life.  I quite like the undyed tones, but will see if she wants a colour.  I think it will suit her as it is, but this little miss has definite ideas about her clothes, so we'll see.

It's not blocked here, not even wet.  I spent some time this morning after I finished it, looking through the kitchen cupboards for something to block it on.  All the plates and bowls were too big or too small or the wrong size ...  the band is about the same size as one of our smaller bread and butter plates but too small for the lace, but the next size up will stretch the band if I use it for the actual beret.

I still have almost 170 gm of this alpaca left.  It's beautiful to use and very soft and snuggly.  I'll think hard for possible patterns.

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