Knitting Norwegian Silk Mohair

We have enjoyed Drops Vivaldi, a classic Garnstudio yarn, (now discontinued) for many years, and still have stock of nice colours. Paula and I knit many, many things with it, mostly as a blending yarn.  The  company patterns for it remain on the site and can be knit with their own Kid Silk.

Vivaldi is (was) 280 meters of fine soft brushed yarn with 58% mohair, 19%wool and 23% polyamide to 50 grams. I used it to make cardigan 88-14 from Drops Design with  3 - 50 gram balls, that is all. It's the same amount I will need for the Snuggle Ganser from Sandnesgarn in their own Silk Mohair which has the same number of meters per 50 grams.

We especially liked using Vivaldi with a tweedy sock yarn to make the SUMMERTIME shawl by Michele C. Meadows (Free pattern on Ravelry), as well as mixing it with a DK yarn for waterfall vests. These days I see Mette Wendelboe Okkels of PetitKnit blends the fine kid mohairs with Sandnesgarn Sunday to beautiful effect for both children and adult designs. There are so many stunning sock yarn around to try.

Kid Silk Mohair is the luxury cousin in this yarn family, Kid Silk Haze from Rowan is an the example of this king of material and  has been around for quite a while. Typically, the finer version has an incredible 210 meters to 25 grams, making garments and accessories that are featherweight, soft, and easily knittable with a 5mm needle. I used it one strand to make the versatile Wisp accessory, by Cheryl Niamath (free on Knitty Magazine) with only 50 grams. When I take it travelling, it fits perfectly in a sandwich baggie, and comes out to chase the chill like a genie out of a bottle.

Vivaldi, though a good yarn, didn't have the magic of silk and kid mohair. If it were cooking, I would say the new ones kick it up a notch, for richness of colour and the softness. I am so happy see the large selection of kid silks made available to knitters these days. It can be overwhelming to choose what to stock, but that's ok, that is the happy dilemma of owning a yarn store.

This summer I decided make the Snuggle sweater (Kosegenser), a free pattern (gratis oppskrifter) available from Sandnesgarn on the Norwegian page, using their own fabulous Silk Mohair in a soft grey, though we do stock the lovely blue mix featured in the pattern photograph. Fuller than Kid Silk, it is still soft and light. The 4th size I'm knitting will only needs 150 grams, or 3 balls of yarn, amazing!

Google Translate accomplished the change to english for me. I did a select all, copy, then pasted it in my word processor program. I redid some of the spacing and enlarged the font a bit. I kept some of the direct translation because I find it so charming.

Since we have used professionally translated Norwegian patterns for over 40 years here at Myrtle Station Wool I had a bit of a head start with the instruction format, but I am confident any moderately practiced knitter can manage quite well. I chose this one now, and I look forward to trying many of the others (in Norwegian). Google Translate and I are very good friends.

As usual I made a swatch, (If you knit looser, use a thinner stick). Read through the pattern (These goals are calculated according to the knitting strength task) and highlighted the size(all targets use ready-made garments and body measurements and range of motion). A snuggle sweater, recipe by Olaug Beate Bjelland, very tasty. Thanks Sandnesgarn, always a pleasure, and thanks Tina and Chris at Nordic Yarn Imports for bringing these amazing materials to Canada for us to enjoy.