WATERshed Harrowsmith

harrowsmith3This is Harrowsmith, a pattern by Ash Kearns of Ash Kearns Handknitting. The cape’s name harkens back to a group of Canadians who fled urban life back in the 1960’s and ended up trying to live off the land, near the town of Harrowsmith in the Ottawa Valley. Harrowsmith Country Life, the magazine that championed back-to-the-land environmentalism, was eventually sold to Telemedia, a media giant. And rural Harrowsmith is now home to a Walmart and Tim Hortons.

Well, Harrowsmith is still a great little cape, even if the times they are a changin’.

I knitted Harrowsmith in Harrisville Design’s new worsted weight: WATERshed. I’ve been working with it quite a bit, so you’ll soon see more of WATERshed on this blog. This is their barn door shade. I have their full sample card. The deep rich heathers, evocative of the watershed around Harrisville, New Hampshire, are all wonderful.

This was a fun, quick knit. My only modifications were to add a few rows to the bottom ribbing, and to use a two-stitch, four-row buttonhole rather than the one-stitch, two row sheep’s eye buttonhole the pattern called for. I also gave up trying to graft the ribbing at the top of the very extravagant hood and just grafted the first rib and then did a three-needle join and bind off. The instructions are excellent on how to graft the ribbing by sorting the knits and purls onto separate needles and then separately grafting the sets of stitches. But my tensioning was off by a country mile, so I felt a strategic retreat was required.

Here’s another view of the front and then a look at the hood.

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2 thoughts on “WATERshed Harrowsmith

  1. @Linda…thanks! I really like the heathering in this new WATERshed. I was a bit worried I’d look like Little Red Riding Hood. But I like it!

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