Well, here I am — breaking my own Summer Knitting rules!  

When Hedgehog Fibres announced their Super Bulky yarn — with some sneak peek photos — a few weeks ago, I was intrigued.  Okay, more than intrigued — more like captivated!  So, I sat myself down in front of my computer on the day and at the hour that it was scheduled to drop — and I had firsties of the lot! And OH there was a lot in the lot!  But I fell for the stunning Potluck 13 color way immediately and popped 5 skeins into my cart — and then I selected a summery shade for Sarah (as instructed) and got 5 skeins of those as well.  Victory!

(Why is this a victory?  Well, Hedgehog Fibres is one of our favorite companies — they are masterful dyers and their yarns are exquisite.  They are based in Ireland and ship all over the globe.  Their yarns get snapped up! Their Potluck yarns are one-of-a-kind and never-to-be-duplicated.  It is like catching a sunset on your knitting needles.) 

Of course, what we are talking about here is very thick merino wool!  Pencil-thick yarn that will knit up into a burly fabric.  Not the stuff of Summer Knitting.  But I imagined I might put it aside, once it arrived, until Autumn.  Maybe Winter.  Certainly I did not plan to sit outside in 80 degree weather with my lap full of heavy wool!

But then the yarn arrived.  Oh man, then I was truly smitten!   It was gorgeous — long shades of blue with amusing winks of fuchsia and pouts of browny-purple and licks of gold….  Yeah,  I wound a skein into a “cake” — just to see it do its tricks.  And OH it felt amazing to the touch — soft and puffy, yet robust and vigorous — a real knitter’s yarn!  At that point, I knew I was not going to hold off until Autumn…oh, I could waffle around and point out that about that time we had some gray, rainy days and who can resist a cozy yarn on a gray, rainy day?…but there was no resisting this yarn even when sunny days resumed (If those colors looked appealing on a gloomy day, they absolutely dazzled me in the sunshine!).

So, I started singing  Camelot’s “If Ever I Should Leave You”  and wound the rest of the skeins into cakes (you cannot knit straight from the skein — a skein is great loops of yarn folded and twisted into something like an ear of corn — a cake is like a ball of yarn which you can knit from).  And, of course, then I had to design a shawl — which meant I finally got to knit the yarn!  A swift but delicious swatch to determine needle size and bit of searching to determine the stitch pattern and a bout of math and charting to get it all figured out…And then the dance began!

The terrific fun of this yarn is that every stitch pops up unique — not just a single hue, but a tiny artwork with 2 or 3 colors.  The stitches are so large that they each hold nearly 2 inches of yarn — and a lot can happen in 2 inches of Hedgehog yarn!  

The shaping of the shawl creates diagonal lines that show up beautifully in this yarn.  There is just a smattering of lace in this piece (because I wanted larger swaths of the stockinette stitches — like handfuls of jewels!) and the holes that make it “lace” are just excuses for the slanting decreases that go with them.  (Lace also extends the yarn so I can make a slightly larger piece)

Being a Bulky yarn, it knits up quickly.  Already I am on the 2nd skein.  So, this is definitely fated to be a Summer fling — maybe it will last through my beach time in August (OOOOH, that will be the IDEAL setting for knitting this yarn!).  By September, I will surely have danced my way through every bewitching inch of Potluck 13.  Of course, then I will have a fabulous shawl!

And then….Well, may I introduce you to Matchstick and Ozone…