Deanna Pilling, a dear friend and fellow member of the Sunshine Coast Spinners & Weavers Guild, has designed a series of special blankets with stripes that represent different areas of the Coast.

For her Pender Harbour throws, she has chosen to use mushroom colours. This blanket was commissioned as a wedding gift, specifically to honour the colours of the rainforest; the pink stripe was obtained from lobster mushrooms, while the tan and brown stripes came from dyer’s polypore.

You can read more about Deanna’s lovely weaving studio at http://www.labellecottage.com/Weaving.html.

The sweater, at last! And I’m pleased with how it turned out: sunset colours on the front, forest colours on the back, and it even fits. I used my handspun (dyed with lobster mushrooms) for the trim, and the rest was made of commercial yarns. The colours are from two years of dyeing, and no, I don’t plan on making another one for a while yet!

. . . but didn’t. Well, actually, I did take the first one, then accidentally (subconsciously on purpose?) deleted it. It was of my third—yes, third!–attempt at the right sleeve for my mushroom sweater.

When I post images of the finished sweater (coming soon), you’ll notice that the colours in the raglan sleeves blend into the colours of the body of the sweater. And since the colours of the body aren’t arranged symmetrically, the sleeves would have to be of different colour arrangements, too. I’d finished the left sleeve without a problem, but some silly counting errors necessitated my starting the right sleeve three times (and ripping out intarsia knitting is a time-consuming activity).

Third try had to be lucky, right? And so it seemed. Everything went smoothly, as I worked with the sweater body laid out beside me so I could choose the appropriate colours to blend in with it. After about a week’s worth of evening knitting, I was done! I was excited to see what the finished sweater would look like, so I laid the pieces out on the table, and guess what? I’d made a second left sleeve! All I could think, after thinking a few choice swear words, was, “What was I thinking??”

So sleeve three got ripped out (frogged, in knitting parlance, as in “Rib-it, rib-it”–rip it, rip it, rip it out), and when I sat down once again to work on the right sleeve, I made sure it was indeed the right sleeve.

Second photo I should have taken: After all the sweater pieces were finished, I blocked them by making them slightly damp, then pinning them out to the right size and shape on pieces of mat board. These I put out on the deck to dry, then went about doing something else. I came out a few minutes later to check on them, only to find that Silas, our goofy Golden Retriever, had plopped himself right down on top of the body! That’s when I should have grabbed the camera, but my first instinct was to shoo him off, not only because he’d been out in the woods that day and was his usual unclean self, but also because he was lying on the pins and needles I’d used to block the sweater. I should have realized that a few more minutes of reclining on whatever was underneath him wasn’t going to change the situation, but instead I made him get off my precious time- and labour-intensive work!

The pieces are now sewn together–I’m wearing the sweater as we speak, in fact–so as soon as I can get someone to take pictures, I’ll post them. The first sweater for myself that I’ve actually completed!

At last, I can see my vision taking shape! I knit this all in one piece, choosing the colours as I went along. I wanted the front to look like a sunset, while the back would be the colours of the forest. And with so many earthy colours to choose from, that wasn’t difficult.

I’m surprising myself with how quickly this is coming together . . . but then I’ve never actually completed a sweater for myself, so this is uncharted territory in many senses of the word.

As I was packing for a short trip into town last week (to see my baby grandson, but that’s a different story – just had to get that in!), my dearest suggested I’d need my largest knitting bag so I could carry my sweater project along. That made me laugh – this has become one of the most unportable projects imaginable, with several dozen butterfly skeins spread out on the couch (which I share with Lolita, my knitting buddy), and a few dozen more balls of yarn waiting for me on a nearby table.

While I have the overall colour design in mind, I didn’t chart how I’m going to use them. Rather, by surrounding myself with this wonderful tapestry of mushroom colours, I can arrange and rearrange the little skeins as I work along, and the next right colour always seems to fall into place.

So far, I have Lolita’s approval.

If I can put in two full rows each evening, I feel as if I’ve made some headway – this intarsia is taking longer than I’d expected, given that I have to untangle each little skein before I can work with its colour. The sweater’s taking shape, though, and looking more or less as I’d planned. (Here’s a little secret: when it’s finished, I want it to look like a sunset.)

Swatching is not only dull and boring, but I decided to use my most dull and boring colours (with the exception of the patch of orange at the bottom left), to save the bright colours for the sweater. This gave me a chance to brush up on intarsia knitting (connecting blocks of different colours), and it looks as if this will go more smoothly than I’d anticipated.

Originally I’d planned to knit the sweater in the round, then (sharp intake of breath!) cut it up the middle to make a cardigan. It is possible to do intarsia in the round, but after four or five rounds, I realized it would take far too much time, as I was essentially handling each stitch three times. So I considered that first effort to be another swatch – a really big circular swatch – and frogged it, only to start again on circular needles, but  back and forth this time.

I made up a bunch of butterfly skeins, to minimize the chances of tangling, then started on the same provisional cast-on that I used for the first effort.

It feels great to finally get started on this project.

I want to make a sweater of mushroom colours to wear when I go to Sweden in September for the next Fungi & Fibre Symposium. The first step was to play with all my mushroom skeins and lay them out to see how I want to arrange them. Because I want to emphasize the colours, the sweater itself will be of a very basic design.

I put the skeins out on my dining room table, then left them there for a few days so I could arrange and rearrange while imagining the colours swirling around on a garment. When I was happy with the results, I realized I had a dilemma: How could I keep the colours together in this way? (My dearest was returning home after a few days away and, since he cooks all the meals, would be wanting the table cleared off.)

So I phoned my fibre mentor, Yvonne, who suggested sliding pieces of cardboard under the skeins and taping them in place. A search of the basement turned up two large pieces of mat board (I used to mat and frame a lot of my photographs), so I was able to get by with just two of those. I didn’t tape each skein in place – that would have taken forever – but looped large lengths of tape over several skeins at a time until everything was secured. These are now waiting under the bed until such time as I can develop an appropriate pattern (Yvonne will help me with that, too). Then I can just pull them out and take each skein off when I need it, thus keeping the colour arrangement in place.

Where last year I found eleven Cortinarius sanguineus, this year I found just one. This was the pattern for all the dermocybes; I found them in all my favourite places, but not in the numbers I enjoyed last year.

Undaunted, I prepared the last mushroom dyepot of the season, and this precious strand of colour will be featured somewhere in the mushroom sweater I’m thinking (and thinking) about.