Now, amidst all this stash enhancement, I can just hear some of you wondering: is she secretly planning to open a yarn store, or does she still knit? While I do, admittedly, sometimes dream of running a yarn store of my own, no, I’m not opening one just now, and yes, I do still knit.

Here’s proof:

Pattern: Hanami
Designer: Melanie Gibbons
Yarn: JaggerSpun Zephyr Wool-Silk lace weight, shade Lady Slipper, 71 g
Beads: Gütermann Rocailles 9/o clear silver-lined
Needles: 3.25 mm bamboo straights & 3.25 mm Addi Lace circular
Finished size: 50 cm x 182 cm

This was a nice pattern to knit, although it seemed to take forever to get it done. It was my travel project and was mainly knitted in a car on various US interstate highways. (The long stretches on the Mojave desert were particularly productive.) Repeating the basketweave section for the umpth time got a bit boring, but other than that I quite enjoyed it.

I followed the pattern exactly except for the very end. There was a ruffle at the cherry blossom end of the stole that nearly doubled the amount of stitches and that I found a bit odd, so I just knitted a garter stitch edge like in the beginning. To balance it a bit, I also added beads to it so that both ends are now beaded alike. You can’t really see the beads unless they catch the light, which makes them look like little silvery rain drops at the end of the stole.

The yarn was lovely to work with, soft and silky, almost frail. So soft even that I can imagine it coming apart if pulled too hard. It’s the same weight as Wetterhoff Silvia, which I’m using for the Mystery Stole, but whereas Silvia is 70% wool and 30% silk, Zephyr is 50/50 and the higher silk content definitely pumps up the lux factor. This is even more evident in the black Zephyr; it has that silky shine that my MS3, knitted with black Silvia, sadly lacks.

Although actual cherry blossoms vary in colour from the palest white to very bright pink, this shade is perhaps a little too pink to portray the frail beauty of them, that passing moment when the whole world is suddenly filled with candyfloss before the fragile petals get blown away by the wind or beaten down by the rain.

I love sakura and the hanami season in Japan. I also like this stole. It’s a little too big and a little too sminky-pinky for me to wear it quite naturally, but I like it.