yarn. earl grey. soft.

I've been knitting Anne Hanson's patterns for a few years now. I started with her sock patterns, since many of them can be adapted for toe-up knitting, which is my preferred method for sock knitting.

Then I got interested in lace knitting.

To say Anne Hanson has lace patterns is like saying the Queen has some houses. It doesn't convey the impressiveness of them. They (Anne's patterns, not the Queen's digs) are imaginative, professionally written and detailed, and always have fabulous photos. The first lace pattern of hers I knit was the Fernfrost scarf.

Despite having only knit two other lace patterns ever, I tackled this pattern and won. And wanted to knit more lace. This design has a 32-row pattern repeat, and there is pattern work on both sides, meaning no purl rest row (purling across all the stitches). I'm not sure why I wasn't fazed by any of that. Maybe it was that the pattern width was 69 stitches, so undoing a row to fix a mistake wasn't all that painful.

Since then, I've knit the Fallberry scarf,

the Poinsettia cowl,

and the Fall Lines scarf from her pattern line.

Her patterns are always interesting, both to look at and to knit, and I've yet to find a mistake in the instructions or the charts (a rare thing in the knitting world).

My latest effort is the Peu de Pluie scarf, and in her new yarn line, no less.

The line is called Bare Naked Wool. It's naturally colored and locally sourced. And it is soft! You can knit with it and wear it next to your skin and not itch at all.

This colorway is Earl Grey. (The name makes me giggle because I don't like Earl Grey tea. The bergamot in it tastes yucky to me. I'll take this yarn over that tea any day.) That animals can grow wool in such a lovely rich color is amazing.

Her yarn line is proving quite popular - new additions often sell out in a day. I'm awaiting my order of worsted weight Chevre, which I will use for a shawl. The grays, I cannot resist them.