Meet Teddy

What does the word 'teddy' conjure up for you? For me it's soft, cuddly, comforting and huggable.

Let me introduce you to Teddy, a gorgeous blend of superfine merino, baby camel and mulberry silk (60/20/20). It's a new fibre that Marianne over at Picperfic's Fluff-n-Stuff has just brought into her Etsy shop. I lent Marianne a couple of shawls to use on her stand at Fibre East recently (you can read all about her weekend at Fibre East here!) and she very kindly sent me a braid of her new fibre as a thank you when she returned the shawls to me. This is in her Lovehearts colourway.

I was itching to spin it as soon as I set eyes on it, and managed to spin it up during the Tour de Fleece. I spun it up as a single, very similar in fact to the Darling fibre that I spun up and used to knit my Citron shawl recently. It was just a delight to spin; Marianne's fibres are always so well blended and this was easy to draft. It was like spinning a cloud of marshmallows!

I fulled the yarn by immersing the skein alternately into hot and cold water, before giving it a jolly good thwack and snapping out the skein between my hands. Then it was hung up and left to dry. I ended up with a rather pretty skein of around 450 metres of light fingering weight yarn.

Next began the search for a pattern. I knew that I wanted a scarf or a cowl because of the softness of the yarn. It felt so luxurious, just perfect for something snuggly to wrap around once the weather gets a bit colder. Marianne came up with a lovely suggestion, the Botanical cowl.

It was a super quick knit, driven partly by my need to see the pretty pastel colours of the yarn emerging. The ribbing at the top and bottom stops the edges from curling in and the eyelets add some interest.

It can be worn as a longer, single loop like this ......

...... or doubled up for extra cosiness around the neck, just perfect for chilly autumn mornings.

The colours in the yarn are just so pretty.

The cowl used up less than half of the yarn, so I decided to knit a Drop Stitch scarf with the rest, as I thought it was the perfect pattern to show off the colour changes.

I've still got quite a bit of yarn left to knit, so will show you the finished scarf another time.

I bet you'd love to try some Teddy wouldn't you?! Well, one of you will be able to, because I'm having a little giveaway! One lucky reader will win a braid of Teddy fibre from Marianne's shop. Marianne is such a sweetie, she has said that the winner can choose a colourway and she will dye it up especially for you! So what you have to do in order to be in with a chance of winning is become a follower of my blog (if you aren't already), take a look in Marianne's shop, (it's probably worth a look in her sold items too so you can see all the gorgeous colours she dyes!) and leave me a message telling me your favourite colourway. I'll pick a winner using a random number generator at 9pm next Monday, August 6th. It's open to anyone, anywhere! So what are you waiting for?! Good luck! xxx