When Pam and I visited Little Knits in Seattle, Fulay put a ball of this yarn into my hands. I simply could not put it down. It was so soft and the colours were so lovely. It’s called Kauri Merino-Possum-Silk and this is the fingering weight. We rummaged in the box – with authorization – and I chose two colours, 02 Kea and 14 (I think) Red Waina.

This yarn is a blend of merino, possum and silk. It’s extremely soft, and feels a great deal like alpaca. A bit of research revealed that it has other similarities to alpaca – possum is another hollow fibre, thus both light and warm. Evidently it also takes dye well, like alpaca, and that bit of silk gives it a lovely smooth gloss. More about the fibre itself right HERE and about conservation efforts HERE. I have mixed feelings about this stuff – it is a “kill fibre” – but let’s not get into that today. (If I had known the whole story, I probably would have just bought alpaca.)

I decided to knit a pair of mitts from MAGNIFICENT MITTENS by Anna Zilboorg, a book that is out of print but provides oodles of lovely eye candy. It’s taken me many versions over the past year or two to get to liking my cast-on – these mitten patterns are knit from the fingertip down. And here they are:

The red is leftover Hand Maiden Somoku. The red in the cuff and on the mitt itself is done in duplicate stitch, btw. I still have to knit the linings, but the mitts are lovely and soft and warm already. What do you think?