Some of the strangest and most beautiful landscapes in England can be found on her east coast, and one of the most remarkable is the shingle spit known as Orford Ness. Now a National Trust property, it’s a Site of Special Scientific Interest thanks to its unusual coastal fauna/flora and is also spattered with buildings (and, they tell us, unexploded ordnance) from its past use by the Ministry of Defence. One of these is the Black Beacon, a radio navigation tower, which also happens to be the place where my husband proposed to me. So when I found this dark-as-night DK yarn, from the Trust’s own flock of Hebridean sheep which graze the Ness, I had to make him not only a hat, but also a scarf, which mimics its hexagonal shape and clapboard construction. The scarf features successive half-hexagon shapes, alternating from stocking stitch to reverse stocking stitch, and is knitted in 2 halves grafted together at the middle.

The scarf knits from approx. 150g of the recommended Hebridean wool. If knitted together, the hat and scarf should knit from 2 100g skeins of the recommended wool.

(An alternative, more widely commercially-available yarn, is Blacker Pure Hebridean DK, but this scarf should knit from 3-4 50g balls of any standard DK yarn. Yardage is approximate as the Orford Ness yarn does not have an official yardage so I have estimated.)

Now fully test knitted and available on its own or as an e-book.