I don’t post much about knitting these days, although when I first started my blog that was one of my main topics. I’m making an exception today.

Noro Silk Garden  is known as a “rustic” yarn. It’s made of a combo of wool, silk and mohair, and a lot of people don’t care for it because it feels a bit rough and usually contains small bits of vegetable matter. It’s not a luxurious yarn, like pure silk would be — but I’m one of those who appreciate not only the gorgeous colors (jewel tones) but the “rough” side.

I finished knitting my Pinwheel Sweater (designed by Shelley Mackie) in the Spring of 2008, and while I was proud of my finished sweater, it always bugged me that I had essentially put a big black hole right in the middle of my back. I mostly wore the sweater around the house, and it spent a lot of time folded up in my drawer. The colors were nice, but not as clear and bright as the colors in my second batch of Silk Garden — the one I was saving for something really special.

Eventually I decided to use that second batch of Silk Garden to knit the Ten-Stitch Blanket designed by Frankie Brown. I originally completed it in June 2013, and it soon became my absolute favorite. By the time I ran out of yarn the blanket measured about 35 x 35 inches. So it wasn’t huge, but it was still large enough for a comfy lap blanket. Always lurking in the back of my mind was the idea of hunting down more yarn in similar colors and enlarging it, but this wasn’t a high priority.

But over the past few months I’ve been downsizing my collection of yarn and repurposing some of my older projects, i.e., unraveling and reusing the yarn. As part of that decision, I finally took the leap and unraveled the Pinwheel sweater; now I’m finally using that yarn to make my beloved blanket even larger.  I’m excited to see how much bigger my blanket will be when I’ve used up all the yarn frogged from the sweater — along with two extra balls provided by a very kind fellow knitter I found via Ravelry. I’m also reknitting the Pinwheel Sweater in a completely different type and color of yarn. This time there won’t be any big black hole in the middle!

SWTC’s Phoenix is 100% soy silk