Mad About Metropolis

Hello friends! Wow, it really has been a spectacularly long time, hasn’t it? As usual, so much has changed since I last wrote, I don’t even know where to begin. We’ve moved AGAIN, and are now living in the very south of France in the city of Montpellier. It was a very rough year, 2019, for various reasons, which lead to this very unexpected move. We went from the very peaceful Limousin area, back to city life, and it has really thrown me for a loop. Thank the yarn gods for knitting, because without it I may have well and truly lost my marbles!

I won’t bore you with all of my personal moving drama, though, that’s not what you are here for! You are here to look at yarn and hear what I’ve been up to, right? Well, I’ve been knitting my behind off, but some of it you won’t see for a while. I know, believe me, it hurts me more than it hurts you. It’s like torture waiting for publications to come out, honestly! I’m so excited for some of the things to be released, but for now it’s all very hush hush.

Once I finished those projects, I really needed a bit of a palate cleanser, ya know? Something that I could just take my time, didn’t have to strain my brain too much and could knit away and relax. I was swimming in Metropolis yarn from Scheepjes, because I went absolutely bananas over it after making my Spice Market Socks, but first I had to make two very important decisions.

First – what colour?! The hardest part of any project, I’ve decided.

The one down side to creating a large stash is that you can very easily spend ages humming and hawing over colour choices. I’m particularly bad for this as I’ll go back and forth a million times. As if the colours I actually had didn’t make it difficult enough, Scheepjes sent me the colour card for the line, which has every single available colour on it! Shade cards can be so handy when you are choosing colours, as it’s often difficult to get a true idea of colour when shopping online. If your preferred retailer doesn’t have them in stock – ask! They don’t always keep them on hand but can get them for you if you inquire!

By the way, if you think a shade card is amazing, it gets even better. You can now get colour packs of Metropolis, which consists of 10g balls for every single colour in the line. That’s 80 teeny tiny 10g balls! They are great if you are into colourwork socks or if you want to use them all together for a blanket or garment. There are so many possibilities!
CLICK HERE FOR A CLOSER LOOK! 

In the end I figured I should still go for a colour I had on hand, and I ended up choosing the colourway Marseille (8122) for two reasons. Firstly, it’s not that far from where I live now! Secondly, it just happens to match the decor of the apartment we are renting for the winter!

We will be staying here until sometime in the spring, when we’ll either decide to get something more permanent or move on again. haha Can you tell I’m tired of moving? Anyway, this is where the magic happens! My little ‘office’, where I do all of my knitting, designing, admin, and general hanging about. You can see my bags of Metropolis on my trusty Ikea trolly! What would I do without that thing, honestly, it’s the best!

My second big decision was what I was going to make exactly! I had a few ideas in mind but I really wanted something easy. There was one stitch pattern in particular that I really loved, which I’d actually first used in a sweater pattern that never became a thing. I knitted it over three times before finally giving up and realising that the combination of the stitch pattern and yarn I was using was just not a winning combo. It was hard, but hey… such is the life of a knitting designer, right? They can’t all be winners!

Thankfully, it worked out much better in Metropolis! I don’t have photos of that just yet, but I promise I will get some soon, as well as the super easy pattern. If you can knit socks, they’ll be an absolute breeze for you. I’m sure many of you can use a palate cleanser too after you are finished with all of this holiday crafting madness, am I right? :)

Meanwhile, here in Montpellier… the Canadutch combo in me is trying to wrap my head around the time leading up to Christmas looking like this! Oh my word…

Life sure can be weird sometimes! You just never know where it’s going to take you…

Ok, I will be back soon with more photos and info on these socks! In the meantime, have a look below for info on where to find Metropolis, if you want to try it out for yourself!

Where To Buy

UK and International buyers will find Metropolis at Woolwarehouse and Black Sheep Wools.
Those of you in the Netherlands can find all you need at Caro’s Atelier.

You can also ask your preferred Scheepjes retailer or find a shop near you!

This post contains affiliate links. This is a way for you to support Canadutch and me as a designer. It is no extra cost to you, but if you shop via one of these links, I get a small percentage of the sale!