Hayloft

I was honored to be invited once again by Brooklyn Tweed to preview knit their Wool People 12 collection. If you recall back in January, I preview knit the Freja cardigan by Jared Flood for their Winter 18 collection. (I talked about preview knitting before here and on the podcast.)

Wool People is Brooklyn Tweed’s annual collection of independent designers from around the world. It was tough to pick just one pattern to preview knit for this collection. There were so many talented designers to choose from – Annie Rowden, Isabell Kraemer, Emily Greene, Shannon Cook, Melissa Wehrle – just to name a few. In the end, I decided to knit Rivulet. It’s a lace cowl knit in fingering weight designed by Shannon Cook.

She is a fellow Canadian and I’ve knit one of her patterns before – twice – the Laylow shawl. I’m a long time admirer of hers. Totally drawn to her modern aesthetic and am dream knitting so many of her patterns such as the Veronika Cardigan, Haro shawl, Hudson, and Bradway.

As I’ve previously mentioned, it isn’t mandatory to use Brooklyn Tweed yarn to preview knit. It just so happens that I enjoy using it! Another dilemma – choosing a color! I’m typically a neutral lover but I was just drawn to Hayloft. I pictured this gorgeous yellow mustard wooly goodness around my neck and shoulders.

As soon as I got passed the border and completed the first half of the chart repeat, I knew this was going to be amazing.

Slowly but surely, I could see the geometric lace emerging…

I was enamored by the contrast of my turquoise handmade stitch markers against Hayloft that I decided to make a matching progress keeper from an old necklace. I also decided to wear OPI’s Closer Than You Might Belem nail polish from their Lisbon collection because 1) it’s a perfect match and 2) I was going on a trip and needed to get my nails done anyway. I can’t even describe how satisfying it was for me and how happy this sight made me feel!

Radley and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary this year. As we sat and reminisced about the past 20 years (married for 10; together since high school), we realized we’ve never traveled alone as a couple before. It’s always as a family, with the kids so we decided while we’re young we’d do something totally different.

Kind of last minute – we talked about going away in passing earlier in the year but never really booked anything. We simply couldn’t decide where to go. Also, keeping in mind a trip at the end of this month which was booked from last year, we didn’t want to go to another all-inclusive.

We decided to go to Amsterdam. At first, we were going to fly into Berlin then take a train to Amsterdam then Paris. It would have been nice, but we only had 10 days. We knew there were lots of things to do so we chose to just stay in Amsterdam and relax and explore. I’ll probably upload a vlog at some point (hopefully!). I brought Rivulet with me on this trip. I knew I will have lots of time to work on it on the plane. Towards the end of our trip, we ended up spontaneously taking a drive to see a little bit of Germany. So, we checked out 3 days earlier than planned and went on the road. More knitting time for me, yay!

We read that it rains a lot in Amsterdam and even though I’m not a gambler at all, I decided to take a chance and only pack dresses and sandals. (Luckily, no rain that week) I brought a bunch of woolies with me for the flight because I get cold easily and I’m so glad I did. We had a pretty long layover in Keflavik, Iceland on our return flight home and Radley had surprised me to go to Blue Lagoon, Iceland! He even packed me a suit and a hat 🙂

Rivulet is a charted pattern but I was able to travel and knit on it easily. I figured out a hack that made it super easy to knit and read the chart. I’ll show it on my next podcast if you’re interested!

I’m so glad I was able to make this shot work…. I literally had 10 minutes to pull it off before sunset.

Although this is a charted pattern, when I returned home and was able to knit several repeats without interruption, it clicked! It is very intuitive and relaxing. It had a nice flow which was an absolute joy to knit.

It’s my first rectangular shawl and I love how it wears!

Like a big, cozy, hug!

My son, Ryan took these photos for me. The day we planned our photo shoot, it had been raining non-stop but thanks goodness it cleared up about an hour before sunset.

These were taken at Wilcox Lake in Oak Ridges – about 10 minutes away from our house. We go here quite often because of the stunning view and has a really great playground for the kids.

There is an option to add buttons and I was waiting to see photos of my fellow preview knitters wearing it as a cowl before deciding on mine. This pattern was just released yesterday but I’m liking what I’ve seen so far! I’m going to see if there are any buttons from my mom’s old clothes I can use.