This morning I woke up to an email in my inbox which had attached to it two lovely photographs of a project completed by Claire Petersen.

[caption id="attachment_6380" align="aligncenter" width="640"]Photograph Courtesy Claire Petersen Photograph Courtesy Claire Petersen[/caption]

Claire came to Scotland on holiday a couple of years ago, and she paid a visit to the dyeshed where she adopted a few hanks of Ripples Crafts yarn.  One of them was a hank of Assynt Jewels merino/silk laceweight which, after maturing nicely for a couple of years in her stash, she dug out and matched beautifully with a design by Kate Davies called Betty Mouat Cowl.   The original design called for different colours of yarn, but Claire managed to use the Assynt Jewels hank which she had to really good effect with the pattern.  It is often very difficult to do anything lacy or highly patterned with randomly dyed yarn as you either lose the pattern in the fabric, or you lose the colour of the yarn in the pattern.  Quite often the best thing to do with randomly dyed yarn is to use it for simple, garter or stocking stitch stitch patterns which show the colours to their best effect.  However I think you would agree that Claire has achieved the result of both accentuating the design itself as well as the colours in her yarn.   This close up of the cowl shows how effective her combination of pattern and yarn is:

[caption id="attachment_6381" align="aligncenter" width="640"]RC-142802-28042013 Photograph courtesy of Claire Petersen[/caption]

The arrival of Claire's photographs this morning was timely too, as I spent yesterday afternoon dyeing some 100% Bluefaced Leicester 4ply in Assynt Jewels colours.  The Assynt Jewels range (like the Assynt Storms range) are very much one offs, and the method of dyeing used means that each hank is unique and cannot be repeated.  So the rule is if you like a particular hank, buy it as it won't be repeated.  There may be similar ones but there will never be one exactly the same.  They are up in the shop now, and I have kept some back to take with me to Glenrothes on 11th May, but here are a couple of hanks that are up in the shop to tempt you:




[caption id="attachment_6382" align="aligncenter" width="640"]Assynt Jewels 05 Assynt Jewels 05[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_6383" align="aligncenter" width="640"]Assynt Jewels 01 Assynt Jewels 01[/caption]