Every season, the day when the shipment of Maxima from Manos del Uruguay arrives is automatically my favorite day. There’s nothing not to love about this yarn. It has great karma, being a Fair Trade yarn from a cooperative that supports women, children, and schools in Uruguay. The extra-fine merino is soft and the singles construction is lovely to knit with. The bundles are big, impressive and squishy, and we get to de-bundle them into lovely skeins:
so that you can buy them and we can knit with them. I never get tired of this yarn!
So I just threw it on the shelf and ignored it.
Ha, ha, ha.
Of course I had to find a new project for Maxima (not that we don’t have a dozen models in the store and I might just have a sweater or two at home.) The Maxima in our shop happens to live right next door to Noro’s Ito, a great big ball of colorful wool that is beautiful but a little bit scritchy to wear. The thought of combining soft Maxima with Ito occurred to me and I went searching. Here’s what I’m making:
Karen gave a great class last season on The Shift Cowl, using DK weight. This iteration of Mowry’s shift series is a nice wrappy shawl that uses worsted weight. I started to play with colors, of course, and found that different background colors do wonderful things to the striping colors of Ito:
With 4 versions of Ito and many, many different Maxima colors, the combinations became infinite. Finally I picked some and took them home. Changed my mind and took some more home. My home became confusing and full of color. I didn’t know whether I was at home or at the store. Was I experiencing dementia??? Was I entering the Twilight Zone??? Had I stumbled into another dimension???
Nah. I just had to make up my mind, and so this is what I’m doing:
Love how it’s developing, and love the beautiful edging she designed in:
Would you like to make one? It’s not hard once you get started. I’m going to do a simple 2-session class on Sundays, November 10 and 17, from 2:00 – 4:00 to get everyone off to a good start. Call us at the store (610-373-1622) or email me at info@yarngal.com.
