Gairloch blanket

There is a howling January wind whirling around the Mull of Kintyre this morning, and it definitely feels like a day to be inside, by the fire, with a cosy blanket. Luckily I have just the thing.

This is the Gairloch blanket, which I’ve designed for our Knitting Wester Ross club.

I enjoy designing a large, slow, project like a blanket for our clubs and collections. My favourites include The Shieling (West Highland Way) The Birlinn blanket (Inspired by Islay), The Kerry Kyle (Argyll’s Secret Coast) and Let Glasgow Flourish (Knitting Season). All of these designs have particular connections to the Scottish places that are explored in each collection, and this blanket is no different.

The colourwork pattern that’s featured on this blanket is a scaled-up version of a motif that has been in use, since at least the early Nineteenth Century, in hand-knitted Gairloch stockings and kilt hose.

I have written a special essay exploring the history and significance of the Gairloch pattern, which Wester Ross club members will be able to read on Sunday. It’s a fascinating narrative, which really illuminates the bigger picture of hand knitting in Scotland between the 1830s and the present day.

Playing with scale and proportion is a fun thing to do as a designer, and the enlargement or shrinking of colourwork motifs to suit different kinds of fabric is a feature of other patterns in the Wester Ross collection.

Thus, the narrow two-tone border panel that’s used in Isle Maree . . .

. . . appears as an allover pattern at a much larger gauge in Denys Martin.

While a pair of Gairloch stockings might traditionally be worked at a gauge of between 8 and 12 stitches to inch, this blanket is worked at 3 stitches per inch. You definitely need a cosy fabric if you want a cosy blanket! We’ve achieved that larger gauge with Schiehallion held double, in shades Crowdie and Alto (a lovely deep, dark, moody purple).

The Gairloch blanket is knitted as a big tube, with a central steek. Once the tube reaches the required (square) dimensions, the steek is reinforced and cut . . .

. . .and a mitred garter stitch and i-cord edging is worked all around the edge.

A knitted blanket is a long term project: a slow showpiece and a distinctive kind of creative challenge which is relished by many of our club members.

So I hope you blanket knitters enjoy this design, with its very particular connections to the landscape and cultural history of Wester Ross!

I’d like to say a particular thanks to Maylin, for all her hard work knitting the blanket that’s pictured here, and I should also mention that this photoshoot took place at Clarsach, a lovely property near Gairloch (where you can stay if you are visiting the area).

There are blanket kits in the KDD shop, and if you are a Wester Ross club member, you’ll receive the pattern very shortly.