Sea colours

I was very excited the other day to finally receive the yarn I ordered from HipKnits. It's taken a while, but I'm very happy now it's here. I'd forgotten exactly what was coming, so I quite surprised myself that all the colours were very sea like. Here they are:



This is pure silk. I got two skeins, each one about 100g. It's a lovely shimmery aqua blue/green with slight colour variations. I think the camera caught the colours quite well.



This is a gorgeously soft cashmere. It's a bit more green in real life than it is in this pictures, but like the silk, the colour does vary from quite a strong green through to a very pale mint. I've only got two small skeins (about 50g each I think), so not quite sure what I'll be doing with this. Other than rubbing it against my face, that is.



These lovely four skeins are undyed blue-faced leicester. I'm thinking of dyeing it myself. I want to experiment with using beetroot to dye wool. I remember doing it at primary school, and it gives such a lovely deep purple/pink colour. If this warm weather holds up, then I think I'll definately have a go.

But enough of the yarn porn. The reason I bought all this was that I originally went to HipKnits for some laceweight cashmere in order to make a Print o the Waves shawl for my sister's 21st birthday in November. I asked for some undyed cashmere, but for some reason I got sent some in a very pale blue-green. I rather like it, so I decided not to send it back (and I really need to get started on it). Looking at other people's on the web, I'm so excited about this project. I've wanted to knit it for a while now, and I think it is going to be just beautiful when it's finished. I'm not sure whether I'm going to knit the centre panel in two halves or just do one. I'm not too confident about grafting it neatly because it's so fine, and I think I'd like it the waves just went one way. I'll see how I feel when I get nearer that point. Anyway, here's an in-progress pick. This is after about 6 repeats.