Da Crofters Kep - SWW 2021

 Wow, its July already, what happened!  This year is going by fast! It doesnt seem very long since the 2021 Crofters Kep was launched, and that was back in April.

Wilma did her usual and created a beautiful hat pattern in 5 different yarns each in a different colourway, and she used my handspun yarn for one again. I was honoured. But that also meant that I had to spin and dye the yarn for kits. 

I decided to set the number of kits to 50, and should have put that information out, but before that happened the enquiries came in fast and they were booked up in a few days. I am only getting back to doing a blog now!!!

My appologies to those of you who have missed out on my handspun yarns for this years kep. I just could not fit in any more time to spin for the hat this year. 

Wilma and I did look at alternative yarns to substitute for my handspun yarn and these are detailed below. 

I loved the colours Wilma chose from my yarns. They reminded me of colour combinations we used to work with when I was young, so really an old type of colourway, but still looks good today.

This Crofters Kep is for me, knitted in the colours Wilma chose.

I have included 2 photos. A front view and a view of the crown.

I usually name the yarns by their natural colours and by the natural dyes I have used on them. For this pattern I decided to give the yarns 'names'. So the background colours I named those Silver and Cloud, 2 narural greys. The 4 pattern colours were all dyed. Rouge was dyed with cochineal and onion. Wine was dyed first with a little onion then with cochineal, Maroon was dyed with cochineal then overdyed with logwood. The last colour, a dark blue, Midnight, was dyed in logwood.

I did love Wilma's choice of colours, but I thought I wanted a Crofters Kep on a dark background. I thought I would see if I could just take the colours and rearrange them to knit a kep that was more ME - and by ME I really mean more blue.

Here is the result. It is definitely more blue. 

The blue background is a darker blue more of a blue/black, still dyed in logwood. The second background is a pale blue from an exhaust logwood bath.

The other colours were Rouge, Wine and Madder but as I had used a colour almost the same as Midnight for the background, I used a colour similar to Wine as a substitute but a shade or 2 lighter.

The result was dark but it works - just, and is very ME.

  

Substitute colours for my handspun yarn colours from Jamiesons of Shetland:

Colour A - 105 Eesit
Colour B - 526 Spice
Colour C - 293 Port Wine
Colour D - 187 Sunrise
Colour E - 343 Ivory
Colour F - 150 Atlantic