PURL PAL: From Vienna with Love

When I first saw a photo of this EXTREMELY fluffy tee it was love at first sight. And THEN I saw its name. Vienna Tee, I mean come on – what more do I have to say? I love my hometown and I love fluffy things. So… the next day I happened to find myself just around the corner of my favorite yarn shops and hopped in. As this tee is knitted with two strands of mohair, it took some time to decide on the brand. I love mohair – I love the way it makes everything fluffy and I love how you can play with colors just by adding it to your other yarn. BUT I have sensitive skin, and some mohair yarns are super itchy to me.
I think I touched and squeezed every ball of wool – because if you knit something with only mohair, you don’t want your mohair to be itchy. Even just thinking of it makes me uncomfortable…

So after I decided which brand I wanted to go with (Tilia by Filcolana), I had to decide on the color. And let me tell you – I’m not the strongest decision maker. Not. At. All.
It took me hoooours… so at this point I want to thank Oliver, the owner of Lille Butik, who brought me some coffee because yes, it took me THAT long.
But after some time I was able to reduce my selection down to two colors – yellow and Bonbon pink – which already felt like a win. So I took a ball of yarn of each color and took it with me to the next mirror, holding both of them next to my face.

That way it was way easier to find the right color for me and turns out pastel yellow is just not the right color for me. And now after I’m done knitting – I think the yellow would have probably made me look like a giant fluffy baby chicken. And who wants to be a giant fluffy baby chicken if you can be a giant fluffy baby flamingo?! (Just kidding – I obviously still want to have a yellow one as well.)

The knitting itself I found interesting. I’d call it a hybrid of two techniques, as you have to pick up stitches for the sleeves and knit raglan increases. I don’t know if that’s normal, up until now I just made big circles around the sleeves where you have to pick up stitches, but to me this was new. And picking up the sleeves wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

The only thing that could be a bit tricky for beginners to understand is the German Short Rows, but they are explained nicely in the pattern, plus there are tons of really good YouTube tutorials to help you along!

Have a fluffy spring!

Bussis

Sophie

PS: All photos are taken analog by my dear friend Sophie Nawratil