Under The Milky Way ~ A New Pattern and Kit from Melanie Berg for Loop!

For those of you who like your shawls sans lace, we’ve got a treat for you! Loop is releasing a new pattern and kit: Under the Milky Way, by Melanie Berg, a bi-colour, textured shawl made with squooshy Plucky Primo Fingering yarn!

At Loop we love a generous, textured shawl, in at least two colours. Cameo by Paulina P is a classic, that we’ve made many times. We love the fun of pairing favourite shades together, and the unfussiness of a simple texture.

To satisfy our desires, Melanie Berg, (Mairlynd) has designed Under the Milky Way for us! She designed our popular Wintermute shawl too!

Melanie works from home in Bonn, Germany, where she designs and photographs her knits, while caring for her family.

We asked her how she came up with the beautiful colourways:

I asked Susan for all the Plucky colorways that would be available at Loop, and from that list, I chose my four favorites.
Bisque and Loafers looked particularly nice together, and of course I had to add a grey and a mustard shade, too.

Swatching later revealed that the contrast of the grey and yellow wasn’t strong enough for the stitch pattern I had in mind, but Bisque and Loafers looked stunning together! Always swatch – it only takes a little time, but you gain a lot of information.

Melanie also discovered that it made a huge difference to use the darker colour as the main colour. You can see in the swatch above how different the stitch pattern looks depending on how you use the light and dark colours. So, whether you knit from our kits or choose two colours of our own, our top-tip is have the dark colour as the main colour.

We think Melanie made the right choice to work with combinations with higher contrast, but she did have this to say, when we asked her what her favourite colour is:

All the Greys are my favourites! They go together perfectly with pretty much anything else. Even with very strong colour pops, or with pastels, or with other greys… it really is the perfect colour.

A broad band of slipped stitches twinkle at the edge of this cosy wide, triangular shawl, making it the perfect companion for an evening under the stars.

Under the Milky Way is knit from the top down, with a generous garter stitch body setting off the “stars” along the edge. 

Under the Milky Way printed patterns are available from Loop, while Melanie (Mairlynd on Ravelry) offers the pattern as a PDF.

We have a limited number of luxurious kits. Each kit comes with three skeins of Plucky Merino Fingering, a copy of the printed pattern and comes all packaged up in a Loop cotton shopper bag.

Plucky Fingering is 75% Merino Wool, 20% Cashmere, 5% Nylon, plied with a tight twist. The yarn is incredibly soft, has great bounce and is custom-milled for the gals at Plucky before they hand-dye them.

We’re offering the kit in three colour ways. Each one is gorgeous. We hope you love ‘Under the Milky Way’ as much as we do. Huge thanks to Melanie for the beautiful pattern and the gals at The Plucky Knitter for dyeing up the stunning yarn for us. It’s truly an honour to be working with so many talented women! Happy Knitting!

Civil Liberties

Last week our hearts were breaking as we watched how children were being separated from their parents and families in the US. We felt like we wanted to do something to help the people that are knowledgable and best placed to do a lot of good. More than we could do either individually or by making a small donation on our own. So I decided to hold a fundraiser and donate all of our profits from my business on Sunday and not keep a penny. This was non-partisan and just acting out of the will to try and help in whatever small way we could with your help. As one human to another. And if getting some beautiful yarn or anything else from Loop helped swing you to donate then that was fine. We were thrilled with the response – kind words and re-posts and sales in both the London and online shop helped us raise £2,500! That’s $3,317 that went to the ACLU and many other great organisations that are mostly made of experts in their fields that also volunteer their time. So, huge thanks to all of you. You made this happen. You can see where the money went below.

Much love from Susan and the Loop team.