Comfort and joy

We've shown you the amazing work of clareblove here before, most notably when we featured Speziale, her wonderful Latvian Garden Baby Blanket last year. Well, she's done it again. This time we're in awe of her Tír Chonaill, which is a combination of several of our favourite things: Clare's knitting, Studio Donegal's delicious Soft Merino and Kate Davies' clever and beautiful design. Unlike Speziale, this blanket is unlined, and that means that you can see the admirable evenness of the stranding on the reverse of the knitting. This sort of work is less complicated than it looks, because no row uses more than two colours at a time. What's more, all of the work is knit and there's no purling involved. The lack of purling comes from knitting the blanket in the round as a large tube. When it's done, the tube is cut open vertically and opened out. It's a process called steeking, and it's much less complicated than you'd think. A bit of careful preparation and a deep breath, and it's triumphantly done before you know it. The exact technique used for Tír Chonaill is Kate Davies' Steek Sandwich, and it results in the lovely plump borders that you can see in the picture above. (You'll remember that Kate gave us a workshop on this technique last year.) If you're interested in learning to steek, then get in touch with us. Lovely colourwork cardigans and jumpers done completely in the round, with the front and sleeve openings snipped confidently open? It's huge fun, and once you start it's very hard to stop, as Clare has happily shown us.