Hanami Stole in progress

I've finished about half of the Hanami Stole (read the background of the stole, it's quite interesting). The design is beautiful, but I'm still doing some modifications. I don't really like the end part with the many holes, so I'm going to leave out some of the cherry blossom sections and instead insert a stockinette part in the middle, also in order to separate the blossom part from the basket weave part.

The original yarn is Knit Picks' "Alpaca Cloud" in "Peppermint Heather". I love alpaca, but as they don't ship internationally I had to look for something else. I decided to go for heavyweight 3/28 cashmere from Colourmart. The color is called "Rumour" (orchid). It came as a cone, smelling funny (because of the spinning oil, I suppose. My mom says it smells like jute fiber. I think it smells dusty.). It's recommended to wash the yarn after knitting so I only wound the yarn into a nice big ball (manually! I really want a ball winding machine!) and hope that nobody in the train where I mostly knit will notice the smell.

The pattern looks quite intricate, but if you stop clinging to the charts and just follow the flow of the pattern you will have no problems. You will know what you have to knit next by watching the development of the pattern.


The little beads represent water drops. Cool, isn't it? :)


That's my swatch. The yarn really blooms after washing, so it's definitely recommended to check your gauge and see if you like the look of your swatch. The washing will definitely even out irregular stitches. If this picture was better you could see the difference between the stitches in the pictures above and this one (I don't think I will get better close up pictures though...).


"Minimaiden" by Handmaiden, bought at Knitty Noddy. The color is called "Rose Garden".


Another handwound ball. I think it looks totally perfect, but I still want a ball winding machine...