Winter finally is moving on. The garden is again coming to life with daffodils following in the witch hazel’s wake. April is usually good for one snowstorm, so we’ll see if we can get by without. In any event, spring is here and, as much as I love working with wool, I am so ready for something lighter!
Well, okay, it is 49% wool. But 51% silk! This is two skeins of Noro Kogarashi I have marinating in my stash. It is not a yarn I typically would buy, but when The Woolly Lamb in Pennington, NJ, closed, the sales were too good to resist. Two skeins came home with me and promptly went into Tupperware to wait. I knew I had the perfect fit when I found this pattern:
This is “Lichen” by designer Larissa Brown and my hat’s off to Larissa because this is one of the most interesting, deceptive, simple patterns I’ve come across. You start out (at least I did!) thinking it is going to be complicated. You cast on and, after a few rows, think “I didn’t do this right.” Then you get into the increases and bind-offs that make the levels and you go “Ah!.” Just count your row, count your yarn-overs, count your bind-offs. Level by level, you step down and around in a spiral until you run out of yarn.
The yardage on the Noro was perfect; I think I had about a 15 inch section left. Long enough that the cast-on end is on my left shoulder, and after two wraps around, the cast-off end is on my right.
Add a shawl pin picked up at Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival, and I’m ready to go.
This, to me, was one of the most fascinating pieces I’ve knitted.
It goes around and around.
And the colors lay perfectly within the stitches.
At the widest point, it is only about 10 inches wide, but 5 or 6 feet long.
Love it! I plan on wearing it for long walks on the boardwalk in the evenings this summer. Carefully arrayed or quickly tossed on, it looks smashing no matter how you wear it!
The Wool Merchant's Daughter 
Hi. I enjoy your postings… just found you. I am interested in what recipe you use to clean/oil..the mixture of things. Can you post? Thank you. Kathleen in Vermont, previous mother and inventor to Kbbspin.org, the Spinners, Knitters, Weavers Housecleaning pages.
Hi, Kathleen! I am familiar with your site and have both bought and sold there. I will do a longer post on cleaning but it actually is pretty simple. Murphy’s Oil Soap if something is really dirty, Orange-Glo if it is not terribly dirty or has a painted surface. Then coats of boiled linseed oil. Lots of coats if necessary. Apply a coat and give it 10 minutes to sink in; wipe off any excess. Apply another coat. You can tell if the wood is dry because it will just drink oil. When she has had enough, the pattern of re-oiling is: once a day for a week, once a week for a month, once a month for a year, and once a year after that. A lot of oil but it does help rejuvenate the wood!