On The Needles: Hiraeth

I just fell in love with the Hiraeth pattern by Rae Gronmark when I saw it getting shared earlier this year. For a while she had made it available for free, but it's now a paid pattern on Ravelry.

Gronmark says that "Hiraeth is a Welsh term that, loosely translated, conveys a homesickness or longing for somewhere you cannot return or that perhaps never was." While the natural colors inspired by the ocean were beautiful, they aren't really my style. Instead, I wanted a scarf that would remind me of a place I currently cannot return: Colorado Wine Country. My family visited Palisade back in 2014 and we had a marvelous time exploring the wineries tucked into the area. It's just gorgeous! But I live in Indiana and I'm not sure when I'll next get back out to Colorado.

Clockwise from top: Kindling, Thunderhead, and Wine Tasting, fresh from being wound.

I queued up my Wine Country Hiraeth back in September of 2015, but I didn't actually start until January. First I had to find the perfect yarn. After much deliberation, I ordered KnitPicks Stroll Tonal in Wine Tasting, Thunderhead, and Kindling as a birthday gift from my parents. Stroll Tonal is 75% superwash merino wool, 25% nylon. It's pretty soft and squishy and knits up well. It's $10.99 for most colors (a couple are currently discounted!), and you get 462 yards in a 100-gram hank. Though a bit more expensive than most acrylic yarns I've worked with, it's pretty hard to find acrylic fingering weight (does it even exist?) and eleven bucks a hank is much friendlier for a multi-skein project like Hiraeth. Since I'll have some leftover Thunderhead and Wine Tasting, I'll probably be able to get at least one pair of socks out of this yarn, too.

The Bee Stitch is made by knitting below the stitch. Super easy!

This is definitely going to be a labor of love. At first, I was really into this project. The bee stitch was easy and the tonal yarn I'd selected was fantastic for it. Once I got into the garter stripes section and the number of stitches on the needle continued to grow (one stitch is added on every right side row), I got to feeling a little overwhelmed. I don't think I've ever hated a garter row more than trying to work on the garter stripes. And there was definitely a part of me that thought, you could just bind off and skip the lace section. It would still be beautiful.

The Hiraeth pattern is also oddly shaped, making it hard to get all of it in one picture if you're going to see any texture.

But I persevered. I finished the second "border section" Saturday and quickly posted it to my Instagram. I'm feeling quite apprehensive about moving on to the lace section, partly because I screwed up one lace shawl so badly that I had to give up on it for months. I also do not want to end up ripping out a bunch of 180+ stitch rows. That does not sound like a good time to me. And since one row can take a good 20 minutes to knit in garter, I can only imagine what it's going to be like with YOs and K2Togs. I think I might throw a few stitches of worsted on some other needles and test out the lace section before I attempt it in my actual project.

Anyone else knitting Hiraeth? I'd love to hear how your process has gone! What else do you readers have on your needles right now?