Koko by Olga Buraya-Kefelian | Knitigating Circumstances

Today is a holiday here, and the sun is shining. In my experience these two events don’t occur at the same time as often as they should. I am about to venture out for a walk in the woods. Before I do, however, a very quick post to show you a pop of colour from my newest project:

This is the Koko shawl, designed by Olga Buraya-Kefelian. The pattern photo has it knitted up in pastels, but as soon as I saw this luscious green at the Unravel festival, I imagined it in this shawl. The yarn is Northiam by Kettle Yarn Co, a fingering weight 100% wool in Samphire (green), Canvas (cream), and Blackthorn (a very dark navy). The yarn is lovely and feels great.

The fabric naturally curls quite a bit, a you can see from the above photo, and it is also pulled in – it will all relax out in the final blocking, although I will try to keep as much of the 3-D structure as I can. Here I am stretching it out a bit side-to-side so you can have a glimpse of what the pattern will actually look like post-blocking:

And here I am stretching it out end-to-end so that you can see how much I’ve knitted up so far – about 15″/38cm:

I’m off for that walk!

I admit that I have not been doing much knitting the last two weeks, despite being in lockdown. I’ve been working from home, which seems to take more time not less, and when I’m not working, I have spent a fair bit of time alternating between long chats with the girls (yay!) and stressing about the news (boo!).

However, on Friday I received some beautiful new yarn in the post:

Yesterday was a glorious, sunny Saturday and I sat at my kitchen table with the doors and windows open, listening to the birds sing, and working on a swatch. My plan is to knit Koko, a large wrap by Olga Buraya-Kefelian:

It takes a bit of time to get used to the pattern, but once you’ve figured it out it is easy peasy and flows off the needles. That is not to say it is fast as (with my gauge, more below) I am knitting 62 rows per 4″/10cm. That’s going to be an awful lot of rows. Here is my swatch just off the needles:

It bunches and curls in on itself, but here it is (still unblocked) with me sort of smoothing it out a bit and holding the edges down.

You can see that the resulting fabric is very three dimensional. (On this point, I must interject to say that Olga is a genius! Truly! No one does three dimensional patterns like she does. I took a class with her once which was so much fun; I blogged about it here. If you get a chance, do take one of her classes.) I was worried that a lot of the three-dimensionality of the fabric would be lost during blocking, and so I gave it a very light block – soaking it thoroughly but then not stretching it out to pin, but rather pinning it gently to shape. Here you can see the blocked fabric:

I tried to take a photo of the blocked swatch which would show the rich, sculptured hills and valleys of the fabric – this is the best I could do this morning:

Isn’t it wonderful? I am in love! The navy is a fantastic, dark, rich navy that looks blue in some lights and almost-black in others. It is the perfect background, along with the cream, for this brilliant pop of green! I am loving this colour combination so much.

The pattern calls for sportweight yarn, and this is fingering weight, so the gauge is way off. The pattern gauge is 24×54, and this swatch, washed and blocked, is measuring 32×62. But I love the resulting fabric and I am willing to put up with LOTS more knitting to turn this out. (Ha! I say this now…..) I also have 800 metres of each colour, so plenty to make a large size wrap even with a significantly smaller gauge.

And for those inquiring minds out there who want to know what the reverse side looks like (I always want to know this!), here is a photo for you.