Tapestries are a great source of inspiration for me. I look at them and marvel how so many have stood the test of time, many of them looking like they were taken off the loom yesterday. The vibrant colors, the intricate scenes they depict, the sheer scale, and the amount of time they must have taken to create make them a unique medium. Our friends at Wikipedia tell us, "Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven on a vertical loom. Tapestry is weft-faced weaving, in which all the warp threads are hidden in the completed work, unlike cloth-weaving where both the warp and the weft threads may be visible. In tapestry weaving, weft yarns are typically discontinuous; the artisan interlaces each coloured weft back and forth in its own small pattern area. It is a plain weft-faced weave having weft threads of different colours worked over portions of the warp to form the design."
As a kid, my mom and dad brought me home a coloring book with details from the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries from one of their travels. I loved that coloring book and it took me years to color it all in because it was special to me. This was before coloring books were trendy, so I suppose I was ahead of my time! That coloring book ignited my love of tapestries and unicorns.
I met Aimee from Little Fox Yarn this past autumn at the Shenandoah Fiber Festival. We look forward to the festival each year (especially the apple cobbler) and have attended for years. Her colors shone and I was drawn to her booth immediately. With a true eye for color and training as an interior decorator, everything in her booth was lovely and could easily be mixed and matched. It was almost impossible to choose just a few colors, but I left her booth with yarn in my hands and a smile on my face. I had Fair Isle plans.
Inspired by old tapestries, I'd like to introduce the Tapetis Cowl, a Fair Isle cowl that uses just 3 hanks of Little Fox's Vulpine DK, a delightful blend of merino, nylon, and cashmere. This luxury cowl is a great combination of corrugated ribbing sandwiching a fun-to-knit Fair Isle pattern working up on US 7 circular needles. The 3 colors are used in equal amounts, using almost the entire skein, but it'd be super simple to add or take away length depending on what you like. This yarn was amazing to knit with, I loved the colors, and couldn't wait to get it around my neck! I love a cozy color work cowl!
With so many gorgeous combinations to chose from, Little Fox Yarn has come up with 3 alternate combos in addition to the original as a kit for the Tapetis Cowl! I love the idea of giving this kit to a fellow knitter for the holidays, since so often we knit and knit for everyone else and forget about ourselves. This is another cowl that has gone into my daily rotation and I find myself snuggling into it throughout the day.
Download the Tapetis Cowl pattern here and check out the stunning kits from Little Fox here.
