This cushion is all about me totally indulging myself with the yummy J&S colours. I’m knitting 2 strands of the jumper weight together so I can mix them like paint and changing one of the 2 strands every row or every 2nd row.

I knit in my ends as I go, and the Shetland wool is so ‘sticky’ that it’s really easy to do this.

I had quite a big stash of Shetland odds and ends from various projects and I had a fun time with the shade card picking out some extra colours to go with them - this is just great fun ☺ I’m deliberately not writing down what yarns I use as I knit - part of the delight of this technique is that every cushion done in this way will be a totally unique celebration of colour - and Shetland sheep of course.

The front was finished on 3 March, and it has been enormous fun mixing and blending all the colours. I have of course acquired a wish list of certain colours that I realised as I knitted would allow ever more gorgeous combinations of ‘colourwash’ stripes!

Even with the front being knitted with 2 strands of yarn held together it still weighs only 72g. I’ve used about 35 different colours of yarn.

I cast on 60 stitches, and this worked fine with blocking although I had to block harder than I’d anticipated given that I was getting 15sts to 10cm on my tension swatch. I’ll stick with 60 stitches for the back, but for another of these cushions - and how can I not indulge my colour fun with more than one! - I’ll cast on 62 or 64 stitches.

I’m also planning to do one just with the 9 Shetland Supreme natural colours.

I’m going to knit the back just in one colour, shade 366, which is one of my favourite J&S colours and I’ve got enough left over from my current ‘everyday’ sweater, which is washing and wearing like a dream.
Weight of back is 67g, including long ‘tails’ for sewing up.