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Gangsta knit!

October 29, 2016

I suspect that I'm now too old and uncool to ever be gangsta, but I truly believe I'll never be too old to try something new.

When I was offered the opportunity to play with a new Wool and the Gang yarn called Take Care Mohair, I jumped at the chance. As you'll know if you know me and my work, I have a long running love affair with mohair and regularly use it, although I haven't had that much experience of the various brands of mohairs out there – I do tend to stick with a brand I know and trust, which is why I'm not really very gangsta like the Wool and the Gang knitty dudes…

Having selected the very pretty Blue Chalk colourway, I very quickly received my parcel.  Don't you love their packaging?  The potty kits very quickly jumped on board – literally 😀

The yarn is pretty nice too!

When I first handled it, I thought that this yarn was going to be trouble – it is very fluffy.  I immediately started having flashbacks to my worst ever mohair frogging experiences (there have been a few…) and decided that whatever I made with this stuff, I had to make sure I was concentrating hard to avoid mistakes I might have to unpick!  

I also decided that investing a bit of yarn into a few swatches would be worthwhile so that I could see how it behaved when knit up at various gauges, so I set to with some 6mm needles.  The result was quite a dense fabric – denser than I'd expected to be honest.  I then decided to have a laugh and try to frog the swatch – imagine my surprise when it ripped back really easily – probably more easily than any other mohair I've used!  I did treat it gently, as I would with any hairy yarn, but it behaved beautifully.

The next swatch I knit was with 10mm needles and this was much airier.  I've knit my 3 Rib Cowl with several different types of yarn and at various tensions, so I decided that would be the perfect one to try out this yarn with, as I was also confident that I'd have plenty of yarn to knit a decent sized version.  I started with 96 stitches and worked to the standard pattern until I'd used about one and a half skeins – you can find full details here. What I got was a pretty big and floppy cowl that permanently looks like it's in soft focus 😀

In fact, it's so large that you can wrap it around your neck a couple of times, if you want to be extra cosy:

I reckon that Take Care Mohair would be a great choice for anyone who loves to knit chunky and wants to try out mohair for the first time, given its relatively good manners on frogging.  You can find a free scarf pattern on Wool and the Gang's website, or you could have a go at my 3 Rib Cowl pattern with it too, which is free on Ravelry. I think I might try it again with the yarn I have left over with slightly smaller needles and see how that one looks.

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