Ok, this is my newiest favrourite.

From Fly Designs Lace Weight Cashmara with Blood Red as the main colour, and Ebony, and Pepper as the accent colours.  The laceweight yarn is 80% superwash merino, 10% cashmere, and 10% nylon; 590 yds/4 oz. I also used deep red wooly nylon reinforcement on the heels and toes.

This size Small pair, knit with the 72 cylinder and 36 ribber on the Verdun 47.  Cashmara is such a beautiful yarn to knit and to wear. Working the small pair on 72 needles at 3/4 turn tighter tension than my ‘normal’ setting makes for very tiny stitches – a wonderful fabric.

Wondferful except for weaving in the ends of the black, trying to find the purl loops to slip my ends through – ay karamuba.

This is also my favourite colour of red – the deep blood red. I don’t know Pat Fly’s recipe for this – but when I dye my own I add a smidge of black dye to primary red to get this rich depth of colour.

I’ve got a drawer full of cashmara ends from other binges, and one of the nice things about knitting argyles it that you use a lot of small pieces, so a perfect use.

Here’s a view inside my sock knitter, mid-argyle. I use the clothespins on the leading tail when I begin a new colour -  that holds the yarn down so it doesn’t rise up while knitting past it. Once that tail is actually knit into the work I remove the clothes pin. That way I’ve never got more than 3 pins in the work.

I have some of Pay Fly’s Cashmara Sock left in my stash and have been chipping away at it.

80% Merino 10% Cashmere 10% Nylon; 390 yds/4oz; machine wash and dry

Here, all in size Medium, knit with the 72 cylinder on the Verdun 47:

Ruby Redmond

Stonewashed

Woodland

Shades of Teal

Here’s a Cashmara Lace Weight – by Fly Designs -  that I didn’t manage to get knit before my shows. This, in colour Blood Red.

80% Merino 10% Cashmere 10% Nylon, 590 yds/40 oz

This colourway is gently variegated – doesn’t show so much in the photo – which gives it a great textured look.

This pair is size Small, knit with the 72 needle cylinder on the Verdun 47.

Cashmara Lace Weight - Petrol

Cashmara Lace Petrol - Large

This is from my last hand painted batch of Fly Designs Cashmara Lace Weight – this one, colour Petrol.

My colours in both photos are fairly true on my screen. It’s interesting that the darker colours dominate the look of the socks, while the brighter colours, particularly the turquoisey blue stand out more in the skein.

I had a single skein of this colourway in a BFL Fly Design sock yarn – a gift from Moe – and I think that was actually my introduction to Pat Fly’s fabulous art yarns.

Moe is quite the enabler.

An interesting thing happened making the pair – size Large – above. The yarn carrier actually flew off the CSM just as I was on the second last row of the toe increases on the second sock.

The yarn carrier was an ‘original’ – ie a hole through which the yarn passes, not a slot. So when it went flying the yarn went with it.

This is not the same CSM that was smoking yesterday! That was the Verdun 47. This was the Legare 400 with an 84 needle cylinder.

I have no idea why the sock didn’t go off the rails, but it didn’t. One stitch dropped,but didn’t run. I picked up the stitch, re-attached the yarn carrier, made a mental note to tighten those screws once in a while, and finished the sock!

And then I went around tightening screws all over the place.

Here is Cashmara Lace Weight in colour Shades of Violet by Fly Designs.

80% Merino  10% Cashmere and 10% Nylon; ~ 590 yards/ 4 oz

Cashmara Shades of Violet - Large

Cashmara Shades of Violet - Small

The colours are reasonably true on my monitor – less of a struggle with the purple family than I normally have!

The top pair, size Large, is knit with the 84 cylinder on the Legare 400, and the lower pair, size Small, is knit with the 72 cylinder on the Verdun 47.

Interestingly – to me – working with this lace weight yarn is really just shifting my fingering weight patterns up one size and up one cylinder – then tweaking the tension for desired rows per inch.

For instance, the Small pair has the same number of rows as a Medium pair in fingering weight, and is knit on the cylinder I would use for Medium. You wouldn’t believe how that simplifies my life!

84 stitches on a toe, for the size Large makes for a squinty job on the kitchener – but even at 14 rows to the inch the stitch definition is excellent so not so squinty as it might be! (God forbid I should forget to use a high contrasting scrap yarn though!)

I knit up a some of Pat Fly’s (Fly Designs) hand painted Cashmara Lace Weight last week.

80% Superwash Merino  10% Cashmere  10% Nylon;  590 yds/4 oz.  Machine wash and dry.

Here are some samples:

Cashmara Lace -Paas - Small

Paas contains very pastel colours of the rainbow.  A subtly beautiful yarn.  You know I normally photograph on a white background but I couldn’t capture these colours without either their fading  or my white background turning dishwater grey!

No doubt there is a way to photograph gentle pastels on white, but I caved and trotted out my black background cloth!

Cashmara Lace - Watermelon - Small

The Watermelon theme was a great one to knit for 2011 as the base colour of watermelon in this tone is Pantone’s colour of the year – Honeysuckle.

Woop!

This is a delightful yarn to knit – flows through the sock knitter like butter. And, you know knots are inevitable – they will show up somewhere sooner or later – but in 2 kilos I didn’t hit a single one!

Another Woop!

Here’s an exciting marriage.

Cashmara Lace Weight in Ebony, and Sterling Silver beads.

The Cashmara is 80% Merino  10% Cashmere and 10% Nylon.

The beads are .925% Italian Sterling Silver, smooth and seamless, 6mm in diameter. I used 18 beads per sock – 36 altogether.

As an extra strength measure I knit Wooly Nylon in with the Cashmara for the hem top of these socks so the beads have a very strong hold into the socks. The beads add 8 grams of weight per sock (compared to about 2 grams for the wood beads I frequently use) but this extra weight doesn’t cause any droop, and, if anything, the addition of the Wooly Nylon in the hem top provides a little extra elasticity, but without binding against the leg.

These are size Medium. Because the yarn is Lace Weight, I knit these on the 72 needle cylinder instead of the 54.  My tension is set to knit about 13 – 14 rows per inch.  On my Verdun 47, that works out to a wee bit more than a half turn tighter than for a standard fingering weight sock yarn (then backed off a bit as the black dye is very dense).

To configure my hem top – I used a mock rib 1:1 . That worked out to give me 18 picos/beads per sock which is what I use on this size when knit on the 54 cylinder with a 2:1 mock rib.  I tried the 2:1 on the 72 cylinder and that gives 24 beads per sock. On a fingering weight yarn in a larger size sock that’s not too bad. But with the lace weight I found the beads end up too close together – I prefer the look of having a space between each bead that is approximately the same width as the bead. To me that shows the beads off a little better.

Here are the other colourways of Cashmara, in addition to Black,  that I’ve recently added to my stash.

Cashmara Lace Weight - Red Rover

Cahsmara Lace Weight - Petrol

Cashmara Lace Weight - Watermelon

Cashmara Lace Weight - Pepper

Cashmara Lace Weight - Paas

Cashmara Sock Weight - Stonewashed

Cashmara Sock Weight - Woodland

Cashmara Sock Weight - Red Rover

Cashmara Sock Weight - Shades of Teal

Cashmara: 80% Merino  10% Cashmere  10% Nylon  by Pat Fly at Fly Designs

The Lace Weight is 590 yards per 4 oz

The Sock Weight is 390 yards per 4 oz

Oh my…. where to begin….