Coins

One of the wonderful things about Fair Isle knitting using Shetland yarn is that you never run out of wool.  Each time you make an item you might buy a few new shades, but there will always be some to use up and even more left at the end.  Then there was that visit to the woollen mill on Shetland in 2000 - and the cones picked up on the Sales table at Spinners and Weavers and the remains of that charity shop jumper I unravelled....  so I have a large plastic box full of it.

This is Coins by Kaffe Fassett, one of those patterns which is so simple you can easily memorise it but creates a dramatic effect.  In its original form it is a cowl, knitted in the round as a tube and then joined.  I don't like knitting in the round, so I made the piece wide enough to be a scarf.  Stocking stitch has a natural tendency to curl and Shetland can be a bit scratchy, so I planned on lining it in silk.  

Choosing the colours was fun.  There needed to be enough contrast for the coin to show up.  Then the next strip along had to sit nicely with its neighbour.  I tended to alternate light and dark as the background colours.  Too dark, or worse, too light and it did not look right. After about eight stripes, I thought perhaps I could use different colours for every one.  In the end I managed this for the first half and then used a single stripe which would not be repeated before reversing the colours on the second half.  Only one stripe remained the same as the coin colour was too light for a background.  

Once finished, it was washed and pinned out flat to dry.  Then came the search for silk..  I have a large box of off-cuts from the silk mills in Sudbury, but nothing seemed quite right.  Although this is multi-colour, brown and green predominate.  So then I rifled through my wardrobe.  There was an olive green top which I no longer wear, in a smooth cotton jersey.  Just the ticket.  It took a bit of finagling to work out how best to use the pieces but at last I had it pinned to the reverse of the scarf.  I reclaimed thread from the top to complete the hand-sewing, slip-stitching the lining in place.

I love it.

I've added a picture of the lining just for you, Carol.  I used the hem of the tee shirt sleeves for each end.