Marta's Yarns

I was saddened to hear recently that Marta has had to temporarily close the doors of her East Malvern shop due to illness. As a thank you to Marta for creating such beautiful hand-dyed yarns, and to wish her a speedy recovery, I'm posting photographs of a couple of scarves I made using some of the yarn I bought from Marta when I was down in Melbourne last year.

This first scarf is one of my favourites, and gets more use than any other scarf I own...


... and believe it or not the colours are even better in real life than they appear here. The scarf was made from a small ball of Marta's hand-dyed slubby yarn in a colourway that always makes me think of gum trees, and was knit using her arm knitting technique. The truly special thing, though, was that Marta herself took the time to demonstrate the technique for me as she wanted to be sure I understood it before I left the store, and when I told her that she'd have to go slowly as I knit left-handed and would have to reverse all her movements, she promptly swapped hands and demonstrated the technique left-handed -- just for me. Truly amazing! :)

A day or so later, I was in the Melbourne CBD on my way to the airport when I decided to pay a visit to the store Marta had in the city at the time. One of my purchases was a stunning hank of 8 ply yarn, which eventually became this scarf...


I love the way the colours subtly evolve along the length of the yarn, which is why I knit this scarf all in one piece and didn't attempt to knit two matched ends and graft them together at the midpoint of the scarf -- the important thing for me with this scarf was to showcase what I had loved most about the yarn in the hank when my eyes first fell upon it.

Get well soon, Marta! You're a very special lady, and we miss you. :)