A man walks into a pub with a bag of wool

... no, not the start of one of my dad's terrible jokes, but what happened at the Rathmines knitting group a few weeks ago. The man in question was Diarmuid, the founder of S Twist, a new Irish hand-spun wool company. 

Diarmuid dropped in to tell us knitters about his hand-spun yarn from Irish fleece, sourced from farms in county Tipperary. He brought some of his beautiful natural coloured singly and double ply wool for us to admire, and a couple of luck individuals were give a skein to make something from, including yours truly!

This is my skein of S Twist's chunky single ply; an aran weight wool with 100 grams in a skein and about 160 yards. It also comes in grey and a grey/white mix. S Twist also has Shetland/merino mix wools, and is looking to expand his range in the future.

I did spend quite a long time trying to decide what to knit, I felt I wanted to do justice to the wool and Diarmuid's generosity. The wool just shouted cables at me and, as one of the other test knitters was making a hat, I thought a mittens or gloves might be good. I eventually settled on fingerless mitts and went for dashings, a pattern which combine a good long length on the arm with some attractive cables.

I think these turned out really well, and the wool shows up the cables beautifully. The wool is a little rough, which is not surprising give its origin, but I didn't find it too scratchy to knit with. I've not worn the mitts out so I can't comment on what the wool is like next to the skin, but I think a dip in some Eucalan would soften out any roughness. I did find that the wool split a little while I was knitting, but Diarmuid has said the newer batch is more tightly spun so this should be less of an issue. All in all, I was impressed with the wool and I would use it again - depending on how soft it is next to the skin I might even make a aran jumper for myself.

And finally some shots of my new dashings and the beautiful peonies in my front garden.