Although our toes are barely into Spring, I have an Autumn project tossing about in my mind.  Fortunately, it is so Autumn-ish that I am not even tempted to make any moves toward starting it – but it is percolating on my mental back burner.

Ready?

An animal print stole worked in slip stitch (Barbara Walker Mosaic style) garnished with jungle leaves.

Awesome.

It all started with some mending.  My (store-bought) cashmere cardigan wore through on the left elbow.  Cashmere is not a particularly robust fiber, of course, and since I wear this cardigan every evening when I knit – and I knit leaning onto my left elbow – well, the wearing through comes as no surprise.  So, I stitched up the hole as best I could and thought about an appropriate patch – since the entire elbow is pretty ghostly and my elbow would be bursting through again immediately, a patch was required.

I have had success with knitting sweater elbow patches.  The patches wear well and protect the melting fibers underneath.  And they look good!  I prefer something plant-ish or animal-ish to simple geometrics – fun to knit and fun to wear.  So, I started thumbing through Lesley Stanfield’s 100 Flowers to Knit & Crochet and 75 Birds, Butterflies & Little Beasts to Knit and Crochet, as well as Nicky Epsteins’s Knitted Embellishments.

But here’s the thing.  My sweater is off white with animal print spots (leopard maybe?) and the garden flowers, orchard fruits, butterflies, northern forest leaves seemed incongruous.  I closed my eyes.  What goes with leopards?  Jungle leaves!

I texted Sarah regarding the characteristics of jungle leaves (she does not blink when I send her these questions out of the blue!).  She stexted: big with obvious veins and suggested that the leaf shaping be in the center and the edge have faggoting.  Good idea!  I also thought about palm fronds.  I looked through the books and thought Lesley Stanfield’s elm leaves looked like what Sarah had described and knit 2 of them up last night.

They are not sewn on yet, but you get the idea.

On the subject of ideas, it was during the texting process that the animal print/jungle leaf stole concept was born.  I got to thinking about animal prints and, naturally, moved on to how one might knit animal print patterns (I am fond of animal prints! I consider them a neutral – rather to my family’s dismay, but I find they work well with any color…).  Having done rather a lot of slip stitch patterning in the past couple of years, that particular colorwork technique came to mind.  Perfect for random spottiness and it would make a firm, thick fabric, so…a stole!   And a sudden vision of knit jungle leaves along one end as a dynamic border! Stunning!

I credit Sarah’s and my combined creativity – we are kind of magical when we work together — although I suspect she will take neither credit nor responsibility for the Jungle Stole!