I was planning a cool, professional, grown-up blog post in my head, but the thing is BETH BROWN REINSEL designed a glove patter using my yarn, and IT WAS PUBLISHED IN THE LATEST ISSUE OF KNITTING TRADITIONS MAGAZINE (sorry for the yelling - this is exciting).
Let me try again.
I always look forward to the latest issue of Knitting Traditions magazine, but this spring, in amongst the usual, interesting, assortment of articles about the kind of obscure knitting traditions that fill my heart with geekish knitterly joy, and patterns that have me plotting new types of yarn that I will someday produce, there is a pattern designed by Beth Brown Reinsel using my yarn. Beth designed a charming pair of Sanquhar gloves, complete with finger gussets, using my 3-Ply Cotswold x Romney fingering weight yarn.
I was anxious to begin knitting my own pair, but I was unprepared for how addictive this pattern is. I started knitting them during my last rotation on the Sea Lion, and during our positioning trip from Costa Rica to Baja (no guests) a co-worker (who crochets) and I decided that when other crew members took smoking breaks, we were entitled to take crafting breaks. I knit most of the left glove in cigarette-break-length bursts, sometimes during rough weather. There are a few mistakes (knitting on the sly does not encourage great care, never mind rough seas) but I am thrilled with the pattern and the gloves. As always with Beth's patterns, the directions are clear and informative.
For those interested in learning Sanquhar knitting from a DVD, Beth has created a DVD available at her etsy shop here.
Beth designed the pattern using pine green and white. I happened to have had a couple off-length evergreen skeins saved for my own use, so I went ahead and used evergreen instead, and I quite like how they are turning out. The effect is a bit more spruce trees in winter than white pines in winter, but I am already looking forward to wearing them next winter (a ridiculous thought, given that I'm not even sure that we've really had spring up here yet).