Rambouillet

it was the 2010 of the Rambouillet festival, its 10th edition too.
many europpean countries exhibited their wools in the europpean pavillion with fiber samples and knit examples and text on the walls of the open space to talk about the different sheep species.

we saw these "animals" as we walked down the isle towards the entrance gate. they could not be fawns could they?! we later found out they were sheared sheep!

a beautiful exercise in style knitting a hat with icord and pompons with spiralling stitch mittens and interesting simple shawl in vertical garter bordered with a crochet shell trim using up every last bit of yarn.

Estonian shawl knit from estonian fiber sheep, tassels made by twisting ends on themselves backwards then just knotted at the ends

different flower shapes in different plants color dyes labelled with the names of the plants used, also made with different fibers sampled in bags below hanging from the lower rod

i learned a lot about fiber and texture. i also now know better than to buy bits of fiber that are not in ribbon, they're left overs from it!!! i bought a tiny bit of yarn of the land or "laine du pays" as they call it in french that is very rough but i liked the colors of the solognette and the burel. maybe they soften with washing, i do not know but i sure want to try knitting them before i purchase a serious quantity.

Ah! and the funnest thing was making a "dream catcher" as i've always wanted to buy one but never could find any, so now i have my own handmade one i think it's very pretty.

i also took cards of farmers, i pretty much know what's available now in france, looking forward to contacting them.

la dame aux roses

j'ai tricoté un châle avec des roses dessus en bleu et or.
c'est mon premier châle et aussi mon premier essai de la technique du tricotage en mosaique.
c'est trés agréable, on tricote en deux couleurs comme pour le jacquard mais jamais avec les deux couleurs à la fois sur un même rang.
deux rangs sont tricotés avec la couleur bleu roi et les mailles jaune d'or sont glissées, puis on tricote les mailles en jaune or et celles en bleu roi sont glissées.

le fil en mérino est trés doux, trés tordu, l'effet pointillé d'une même couleur de plusieurs tonalités sur du fil blanc est du plus bel effet: trés riche.

j'ai choisi de tricoter une bordure en motif de roses avec un centre en point de lin à côtes; et pour le côté technique, reprendre le nombre de mailles pas trop important ni trop juste était un peu périlleux, il ne fallait pas que ça gondole.

je suis assez satisfaite de cette pièce. vous remarquerez l'iris russe pendant au milieu du dos. j'avais déjà bloggué au sujet de la fleur dans mon post "oya" auparavent. la fleur est tricotée avec des aiguilles trés fines en utilisant du fil dentelle mohair. une perle d'eau douce irrégulière pend de la stamine.

this is the first shawl that i knit, i wanted it to be very warm and it is as it is not lace but mosaic knitting.
this technique consists in knitting two rows per color then alternating with the second one, knitting the next two rows with it. it is very enticing.
i chose to have a border of roses surrounding a linen stitch in the gold color for the main part.
this merino yarn is beautiful as much as it is soft. each color is various shades of blue on top of one another drizzled on an off white background for the royal blue yarn and different shades of golden yellow on an offwhite yarn for the golden color.
picking up the right number of stitches to do the border was rather fiddly, i did not want the piece to be bumpy nor to pull.

i am pretty pleased with this one. notice the russian iris hanging from the back, that's knit in very thin needles with a lace mohair yarn of matching colors that i already blogged about in the post "oya", a wild pearl tops off the yellow stem.