Caterpillar Green yarns have been on my radar for awhile.  The last straw was seeing Stephanie Pearl-McFee knitting with it at YarnFest. She was crazy in love with it, so I put it on my list of things to check out.  I  signed up for the mailing list, and when a shop order came up, I splurged and bought a few skeins.  Caterpillar green dyes the yarn so that if you knit any triangular shawl that has standard increases along the sides and up the middle, the stripes will form evenly and effortlessly.

When the skeins arrived, they didn’t really look different than any other hand-dyed skein, but when wound up you can see that the layers of color are very even in the wound cake.  The first skein I reached for was “Finger paint”, but I didn’t feel like making a triangular shawl.  Why make it easy?  So, I started to work short-row stripes, instead.  It took a bit to find my rhythm, so the beginning is a little wonky.  But then I settled into a system that I am very happy with.  I worked the solid colors in short rows until I hit the color change that is varigated, and then knit those bits all the way from side to side.  When the color changed to solid color, I did short rows from the opposite side worked last time.  This turned out to be more a scarf than a shawl, and I really like it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What I did not expect was how much I would love the feel of the yarn.  This is 70% superwash merino, 20% cashmere, and 10% nylon, so I expected it to be nice.  But, it is spectacular.  Super soft, amazingly cozy, I could knit with this for the rest of my life.  After finishing the short row project, I immediately wound up the “Concrete and Tulips” skein.  This time, I played it safe and knit a triangular “Boneyard” shawl, by Stephen West.  I think I am the only knitter left on earth who hasn’t knit one, and this seemed a great yarn for it.  It worked up too quickly, and is now blocking.

This has been a rough month for me, personally, and this yarn has been the perfect comfort knitting.  I can’t recommend it enough.