dozenoaks: Wedding: Knitting II

I'd decided, after making my gloves, that everything intended for the wedding should be made in Alice Starmore's yarn. I'm pretty sure I made this decision during our stay in Scotland, because when you're surrounded by that landscape it seems purely logical to fill your life with it. The depth of colour in Alice Starmore's yarn is vertigo inducing and the colours really are of that landscape. We'd wistfully toyed with the idea of having our wedding in Balnakeil when we got engaged, but logistically it wasn't possible - organisation wise or guest transportation wise. It takes days to get there and back. And as much as we'd have liked a party on the beach, it could easily have been storms, gales and deeply unpleasant at any time of year. Using Alice Starmore's yarn at least made me feel like I was bringing a bit of Scotland's landscape south (we did literally bring Scotland south too - more of which later).

The next projects I trained my knitting laser focus on were for 'The Next Generation' - the kids of my brother and sister. My eldest niece is six and wanted to be a bridesmaid beyond anything (she described the day later as the best day of her life - really). My youngest niece was too young for her matching shawl and didn't want to wear it, which was a shame but predictable. My nephew was angelic and looked smashing in his owl jumper, he has a thing for owls so he even liked it.

The two shawls were another Ysolda pattern - this time Ishbel. Scottish yarn + Scottish (in name at least) pattern = much better match for Ishbel than the Debbie Bliss "Pure Silk" I originally made this pattern in for myself, back in 2009. I used Hebridean 2 ply in colour "Strabhann" - turquoise blue that results "when a clear, unpolluted sea comes in over such a pure, pale beach". The jumper is of course owlet, designed by Kate Davies. This time knitted in the Aran weight Bainin in colour Suilven. This is what Starmore has to say about the colour Suilven:

From where I live, on a clear day I can see the whole north-west coast of Scotland from Cape Wrath down to the Isle of Skye. This coastline takes the form of a magic mountain range, seen sometimes in silhouette and sometimes in glorious snowy detail when the weather is cold. SUILVEN is directly opposite me across forty miles of sea: a teal-blue spike of Torridonian Sandstone pointing straight into the sky.

I think we took roughly a bajillion pictures of Suilven in the snow during that Christmas.