Good morning! Welcome to all knitters who are joining the Yorlin KAL! And a very warm welcome to all readers to my home, here in Kintyre.
Today I’ll be showing you some of my garden, while introducing my brand new Ardlui Yorlin.
If I had to pick one, single shade of Milarrochy Tweed from the whole 24-shade palette and name it as my favourite, I would have to choose Ardlui. This is not just because I’m a generally blue-gravitating person, but because of Ardlui’s very particular shade of blue.
When I describe Ardlui as a dull, middling, grey-ish sort of blue this does not capture quite how wonderful and mercurial a shade it is. There are green as well as grey tones underlying this “dull” blue, and, because of the yarn’s interesting tweedy neps, the overall feel of the shade is anything but flat. These colourful flecks include a lively acid green (Stockiemuir), a light, pale blue (Smirr) and a rusty orange (Asphodel). All three of these contrasting colours lift and enliven Ardlui’s distinctive blue, resulting in a complex and interesting shade that works surprisingly well in many different palettes.
Ardlui sits particularly well with brown, and one of my all-time favourite shade pairings is with Horseback Brown, a combination I enjoyed using to bold colour blocked effect in my two-shade version of Strathendrick.
Yet Ardlui can sit well in brighter, lighter combinations too: in my Tonnach cardigan, for example, Ardlui plays a key role in dialing down what, with a more definite blue, might have proved a slightly-too-in-your-face festive bunting palette.
Against paler shades, and especially when paired with pink, Ardlui becomes a light and summery pastel . . .
. . . but when combined with orange, it adopts a sophisticated, autumnal air.
Ardlui’s mercurial nature makes it a shade that is very happy to act as an obliging wardrobe workhorse. An Ardlui cardigan would look equally wonderful when paired with a linen dress of a light, pale blue, or one of those taupe-y, flaxen neutrals that seem to be everywhere at the moment. And when deciding on today’s photography outfit, my swithering between a bright red dress and a rusty-coloured jumpsuit suggests just how versatile a shade Ardlui is, making it an excellent choice for a cardigan intended to see multi-seasonal duty.
All of which is to say that Ardlui was my first choice for my new Yorlin.
The waistline of my jumpsuit usefully illustrates how I’ve knitted my new Yorlin to a couple of inches or so below that, so that the cardigan sits at my high-hip.
Working from the top down is useful if you like to try on a few outfits before settling on your garment fit and length. I knitted the second size, and felt the cardigan was just about long enough for me after completing 8 full repeats of the Yorlin lace motif. I therefore decided to work fewer rib rows in order to shorten the cardigan from the pattern’s “standard” length.
If you prefer a deeper rib, you could also choose to end the lace repeat earlier before transitioning to the rib. The version of the cardigan I’ll show you tomorrow has a body that is knitted to exactly the same length, but with twice the rib and far less of the lace’s final repeat.
I’ll also talk tomorrow about how you should go about deciding when to stop in the lace panel in order to achieve a nice, smooth transition into the twisted rib.
But today I thought you might also like to see a little more of my garden.
Here I am, willing some peony buds to open, to fill the space above this romping red centranthus.
And here’s a colourful bed beside the driveway that’s about to really come into its own. . . .
Behind the spilling mounds of helianthemum, you might be able to spot a group of apricot-coloured geums together with emerging spires of hot pink candelabra primulas in front of the purple lupins. At the back of the bed are some glorious bearded irises, and in the middle (to the right of this image) a group of Oriental poppies are about to burst forth into bloom.
This is my favourite poppy, though: the Himalyan blue.
I am ridiculously proud of my single meconopsis specimen, which loves its shady spot, and which is really thriving this year after last winter’s serious mulching. I layed down manure, covered with a thick layer of strulch, which the whole garden seems to have really appreciated.
The strulch seems to have been particularly beneficial for the thriving hostas, which, as you can see, have happily not been savaged by slugs and snails this year, despite their shady burn-side position. In front of the hostas, you can also see the 6 tonnes of pebbles which Tom and I laid at the start of the year (he with a wheelbarrow, me on my hands and knees) and a lovely acer, whose shimmery russet hue is one of my favourite things in the whole garden.
Here beneath all of those courtyard pebbles, my new gravel garden is beginning to emerge.
The echinops and eryngium I planted as bare roots are beginning to spread themselves about, while on the right, you see the yellowing remains of an exuberant tulip display, which will be removed this weekend (in the great pot turnaround) to be replaced with all the sweet peas and cosmos I’ve grown from seed.
Here you can see three different clematis behind the burgeoning nerines and amarines which will bring a late splash of colour, come September. In the pot on the far right, meanwhile, my Mary Delany rose is beginning to clamber up the wall.
How I love this time of year.
I’ll be back tomorrow to show you another Yorlin sample (knitted in a different yarn), as well as some more of my garden. But before I go, please celebrate with me the glorious scent of my first rose of the year, a David Austin Desdemona, which I planted as a bare root last winter, and which I’ve been looking forward to burying my nose in for weeks.
We have today updated the shop with Ardlui Yorlin kits in all sizes, and have also re-issued the Yorlin pattern with the new photography (keep an eye on your Ravelry library for the update!) I’ll be introducing Yorlins knitted in several different shades of Milarrochy Tweed as our KAL progresses, but in the meantime, if you would like to knit this cardigan in any of our other colours, all you have to do is email Maylin at help@katedaviesdesigns.com and she’ll happily make up a custom kit for you. I know this involves a bit more faff than hitting a checkout button, and I apologise for that, but it simply is not practical (or indeed possible) for us to set up a product with the more than 300 variations this would involve . . . that said, Maylin is ready to help you personally with any and all of your Yorlin kit requirements, and can also give advice (if needed) on selecting sizes and / or colours before making a purchase. And if you need fresh eyes or ideas to help you with a shade-related decision, you can also share photos of your yarn choices in our Ravelry group.
Are you ready to cast on?
Yorlin kits in the KDD shop
Contact Maylin for kit assistance: help@katedaviesdesigns.com
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