I enjoy my Agatha Christie as visual experiences rather than words on the page, whether it is the cinematic classic, Witness for the Persecution, (1957 with Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, and Charles Laughton) or the new streaming adaptations of Hercule Poirot starring and directed by Kenneth Brautigan.
While I know Marie Greene best as a knitting designer, instructor, and the author of six knitting books, she has a passion for mysteries. Currently she is expanding her repertoire while writing her first mystery.
Two of her fall mystery knit-alongs (MKAL) paid homage to her favorite author, Agatha Christie, with The Tuesday Night Wrap in 2023 and, most recently, last October, with Arsenic and Old Lace. As my attention was focused on unpacking and hanging art at Solstice Place, I cast on after the pattern was fully revealed. No mystery during my project.
Arsenic and Old Lace is a two-color shawl that begins by casting on five stitches and then, through a series of increases along the side edges and the center midline, grows into a lacy triangular shawl. This version artfully combines two skeins of fingering weight yarn. The pale blue is from my days as member of Sew Happy Jane’s Handdyed Yarn Club and the creamy variegated was a souvenir skein purchased during our great-niece’s destination wedding weekend in Tennessee. It is always rewarding to stash dive and transform yards and yards of yarn into wearable art.
My in-house “colorist” helped select the lovely hues for the Spring String mystery knit-along. I am so pleased with the result that I am keeping the Postcard from the Edge shawl for personal use. When making my initial yarn selection, I identified several pairings from among my stash that looked good but I was stumped when moving beyond two complimentary skeins. However, the pattern required a third selection – a main color, a contrasting color and an accent. I will admit I was hesitant when Richard chose Farmers Market (MC), Macrame (CC), and Pumpkin Spice, a variegated accent skein as I could not envision the outcome. (Note to self – Trust the artist in the house!)
Knitting began when the first of five mystery clues was revealed on April 1 and continued quickly with the release of a new clue each Tuesday; all while learning several new stitches. The hand-dyed organic Merino from Heather Best at Sew Happy Jane had a lovely feel, flowing through my fingers. The Knit Camp pattern from Marie Greene offered clear, tech-edited directions and even provided stitch counts as the shawl grew by four stitches every other row – from just five stitches at cast-on to 419 at bind-off. The end result a triangular shawl featuring lacy scallops and slipped stitches drawn into flowery bursts.
…it is time for Knit Camp’s 2025 Spring String Mystery Knit-along (MKAL).
The first clue dropped today without any April Fools tomfoolery. The remainder of the pattern will be revealed over the next four weeks. Just like a well-written dust jacket blurb that offers story hints without giving away the plot, the pattern’s pre-release notes provided an overview sufficient to know this will be a triangular shawl, in three colors using fingering weight yarn.
Colors: Farmers Market, Pumpkin Spice & Macrame
The yarn for Postcard from the Edge is a lovely selection of hand-dyed, organic Merino from Heather Best at Sew Happy Jane. And, with a move to a new house always on the fringe of my consciousness, there will be three fewer skeins to pack and move as I did a “stash dive” for this project.
Top to bottom: Cranberry Chutney, Sage, Tutti Teal, Speckled Peach Melba & Grapefruit Sparkler
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Throughout the week, we tackled a colorway a day. My original plan was to set up a temporary dye studio in the garage with a borrowed Coleman camp stove as my heat source. But that was me worrying unnecessarily about Kool-Aid spills and stains on the parquet floor. Dyeing in the garage required far too much extra work to move cars, assemble a work surface, and collect tools and supplies each day since the Audi Q5 and VW GTI would need to be parked back under cover at night. Our final production line was in the kitchen with water, heat, and tools all close at hand.
During Knit Camp at the Coast, Heather Best from sew happy jane promised to “turn some pretty skeins into some Pretty Amazing skeins.” While we carefully mixed our Kool-Aid combos and watched the pot (to make sure it didn’t boil) our skeins of bare merino DK yarn artfully shifted from au naturel to subtle hues. As a readily available foodstuff, in a multitude of flavors (which translated into colors) the Kool-Aid packets provided easy to mix, manageable quantities that already contained citric acid, thus they eliminated the need to add chemicals possibly less friendly to the environment. One by one, each skein went through a multi-step immersion process:
Soak.
Simmer.
Steep.
(Speckle & steam – just sometimes.)
Rinse.
Dry.
Two days into our routine, with Kool-Aid Sage twisted into a loose hank and Speckled Peach Melba steeping, I made a discovery – dyeing would not become my new passion. As the work continued, we had fun creating the lovely semi-solid fibers, as well as sprinkling contrasting specks. By skein five, I even concocted my own colorway – Tutti Teal (a variation of Heather’s Tutti Fruiti). But I am comfortable knowing my excitement comes from the craft of knitting – finding the perfect yarn, pairing it with the ideal pattern, and creating just the right gift while, hopefully, learning a new technique rather than playing with pigments.
When I first started buying yarn, facing a wall of color in different weights and textures was a bit overwhelming. Now, I can easily spend an hour or more immersed in tactile and visual sensations enjoying whatever my local yarn store (LYS) has on display. While, possessing only the most rudimentary understanding of yarn production, I already recognized that a lot of work went into each skein in my hand. That appreciation has grown exponentially with this micro-dyeing project. But hand dyeing, to paraphrase the witches in Macbeth, at least for me, is akin to “double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble.” Although, in the interest of full disclosure, my fire and cauldron consisted of a white LG glass top stove and a Marshall Field Marketplace stainless steel stock pot. Then again, one does have to wonder what colors might emerge if, instead of Kool-Aid, the pot contained any of the natural ingredients from my high school drama role as Second Witch.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1
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