If you enjoy Knit-A-Longs, love Kaffe Fassett’s designs and don’t have enough afghan’s here’s something for you: the Kaffe Knit Along 2017.

Below is a partial image of Kaffe’s afghan courtesy of Fiberwild’s website.

This afghan, designed by Kaffe using his iconic colourwork and patterning skills, will begin with the first weekly pattern segment published on the Rowan website on March 30th, 2017 and then every following Thursday until the end of June with 14 patterns in total. Here’s all the dates:

KAL Kick-Off: Thursday, March 30th, 2017
Subsequent Pattern Release Dates
Thursday, April 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th, 2017
Thursday, May 4th, 11th, 18th and 25th, 2017
Thursday, June 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd.  Catch-up Week June 29th, 2017
Border and Finishing: Thursday, July 6th, 2017

If you are an intermediate knitter, or even an experienced beginner (I think you know what I mean?) you can create this design fairly easily as it is knitted in 48 separate squares and then sewn together afterwards. The final layout of the squares flows around Kaffe’s instantly recognizable tumbling block design………

For this afghan there is only one coluorway using 14 different colors (31 total balls) of Rowan’s Pure Wool Superwash Worsted Yarn (100% Superwash Wool). Find below the shopping list of the shades and the number of balls you will need to complete the afghan.

Soft Cream x6
Moonstone x5
Charcoal Grey x6
Rust x1
Mallard x1
Cardinal x1
Oxygen x2
Oxford x2
Plum x1
Pretty Pink x2
Damson x1
Jade x1
Rich Red x1
Magenta x1

If you are not keen on Kaffe’s choice of shades it is possible to choose your own, although since Rowan reduced the shades this is a little more challenging than it used to be. Here’s all the Pure Wool Worsted shades available now……

…………although some places may still have some of the discontinued shades.

The overall hue of the afghan is on the cool side and to push this a little further a simple change would be to swap Rust with Hawthorn and Jade with Periwinkle. This would remove the most prominent yellow based shades leaving the overall colour appearance to be almost completely cool. To increase the cool look even more change the cream-moonstone-charcoal grey blocks to white-oxygen-electric.

Changing to warm shades is a little bit more difficult as there are not enough warm based shades to choose from and I have not seen the patterns so do not know which shades have been paired together. However, to create an overall warm look you would need to remove the cool based shades Oxford, Plum and Magenta. I would also suggest removing Mallard but as it is a green-blue shade and with no obvious warm substitution in the current range I am leaving it in. So, swap Oxford with Hawthorn, Plum with Olive and Magenta with Gold. To increase the warm look you could change the cream-moonstone-charcoal grey blocks to cream-almond-rust.

On FiberWild’s website they do still have some of the discontinued shades so if they are still available you could also change:

Pretty Pink to Grasshopper
Mallard to Chestnut
Cardinal to Seville
Rich Red to Papaya
Damson to Clove

This will warm the colourway up even more.

If you want more information about this Kaffe Fassett KAL, FibreWild have created a very comprehensive page on their website which contains links to Rowan’s website, the Kaffe KAL 2017 Ravelry thread and a fabulous opportunity to buy all the yarn you need to complete the afghan with 25% off. They have the 31 balls in Kaffe’s colourway in the form of a yarn pack ready to click and buy. Check out the link to their website below.

www.FiberWild,com/Kaffe

Click below to go to the shopping list on Rowan’s website.

www.knitrowan.com/news/kaffe-fassett-knit-along-2017-shopping-list-0

So, will you be joining this KAL? Please do let me know by leaving a reply below or scroll to the top and click on the little speech bubble!

Thanks so much for reading my blog.

Esther x