I oo'd and ahh'd over the cover of the premiere issue of Interweave Knit.Wear magazine. It was the Shaped Capelet with Braided Cables in deep red/burgundy shade. During the winter season, my office gets cold. We do turn on the heater but it takes a bit while to warm up the whole building. So something like this would be perfect! I, of course, have been using all my shawls and knitted scarves at work, but this will actually stay ON my body as opposed to me having to adjust constantly.
I chose a natural colorway for this because I wanted it to go with everything I wear. And plus, I scored this gigantic 500-gram skein of chunky weight yarn back in February 2011 when I visited the DIY haven called Dongdaemun in Korea. Guess how I much I paid for this. $12, USD. The entire 500g of yarn for $12.
The downside of shopping at Dongdaemun (literally, East Gate) is that many of the yarns are manufactured without yarn label, so you have to be pretty good at guessing the fiber content and weight. If you ask the sellers, they'll tell you "it's about 100grams," or "you'd need x number of balls to complete a sweater." or something to that effect.
At Dongdaemun, I found beautiful yarns for around $2 USD per ball, so when the seller said this yarn was $12, I was kind of shocked. Looking back, I am kicking myself for not buying more. Because, this is probably the softest, drapiest(?), chunky weight yarn I've ever worked with. It doesn't feel like 100% merino wool, but I'm guessing it's more than 80% natural fiber. I am going to be hand washing this anyway and it didn't have any plastic feel while I was working on it so I'm not complainin'.
