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Planning a Handspun Bohus

Bohus sweaters resemble Fair Isle in many ways, though the technical differences consist mainly of purling in the color pattern, use of more than two colors in a row, and traditional use of fine gauge (34 sts per 4 inches) angora (fuzzy) yarns. The Bohus Stickning sweaters were well known examples, as documented in the wonderful book, "Poems of Color." Solsilke has made a great effort to provide kits true to the original designs, available here.

While knitting an "original" using a kit certainly has its attraction, I'm not quite sure I would ever complete a project with so many stitches! Another option has presented itself, inspired by Adrian Bizilia of Hello Yarn. Her handspun Fantom Bohus in worsted weight provides proof that it doesn't have to be tiny, fuzzy yarn to be an amazing Bohus sweater.

I set about spinning some worsted weight yarn using Shetland fiber in SCF's "Blue Mountain Combo" color set.


Southern Cross Fibre's shop photo of the Blue Mountain Combo.


I have five bumps of the dark blue, "Eclipse," to make the body of the sweater. I still have to spin the rest of the "Eclipse," but I have enough yarn for the yoke and have started knitting.

I picked a colorwork pattern out of "Poems of Color," the Dean pullover. (Dean is pictured on the Solsilke site linked above.) It used black for large colorwork motifs and had a version with a black body, so I thought this would work well for the colors I had available. I entered the chart in an Excel file and re-colored it using my own colors.

Blue Mountain Bohus Chart


The green came from bits of color from a handpainted SCF club fiber, also on Shetland, the colorway "Submerge." I have three bumps of "Submerge," which yielded more than enough of the bright green.

SCF Sept 2012 Clubs

I took a group shot of the spun yoke yarns before I started knitting.

BMB

BMB

I should have enough of the yoke knitted to be worth taking photos, sometime this week!

Happy Knitting,
Lisa Kay

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