Thursday, September 26, 2013

Tam Update - A Starry Tale

Yesterday someone asked me if I'd been knitting any more tams. Well, yes . . .

The pile is getting rather ridiculous now. Perhaps I should sell some somewhere, somehow. My trouble is that I make each one different even if I use the same design, so they take time and the wool is not cheap. The price would have to be more than anyone is prepared to pay so in the end I give them away.

I found some lovely 8-ply alpaca in Doe Arnot and Flagstaff Alpacas range. They had a lot of marled wool in different shades and I thought I'd see how it looked knitted up in Fair Isle tams. I also tried using variegated colours which gave an impressionist look to the tams.

Here are some examples:

This one is Meadow Flowers. The odd thing about this tam is that the flowers only become noticeable when the tam is being worn.












Here is the same tam in different colours:


Quite different, isn't it?

Here are two more marled tams -  Butterfly and Star (using some Gimmerburn), and Tall Ships

















and Hearts and Flowers
















This is Gold Star in two colour combinations:



There are a couple more, using the Renaissance Dyeing 4-ply Poll Dorset. I'll give you a preview and I'll be writing up the patterns for them soon.

Heavenly -




and Icelandic Trees.


Hope you like them.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amazing. I am super jealous you can get hold of so much of the dyed Flagstaff Alpaca so easily. The website only lists a paltry selection. :-(

blodeuedd said...

I believe Andy has been very busy at trade shows and hasn't updated his website. Doe Arnot can be contacted directly and she'll dye any colours that you want for you. The Oamaru textile Exchange usually has a good selection, too.

Dyer said...

aI am just off to AEF in Paris with your Tam patterns as usual. At such shows I often get asked to sell my models. I could have sold Landgirl socks hundreds of times. Mostly people then don't want to buy the kit. This year I will ask for how much they would want to buy such a Tam.
They are indeed priceless as far asI am concerned but perhaps we could find a fair price for all.
Then it might be off to Etsy with you.