Spinning Yarn for a Sweater
It wasn’t actually too long after I got into knitting that I also took up spinning. There’s something immensely satisfying about knitting with handspun yarn, it’s so much more “alive” than most mill spun yarn.
Though unlike knitting and sewing, my spinning mojo seems to come and go more with more frequency.
Because of this, I tend to spin accessory quantities of yarn, and I’ve never knit a sweater entirely out of handspun before.
*the main exception being the yarn I knit the swatches for the first Shawl Geometry book – that was about 1,000 yards of spindle spun lime green light fingering/heavy lace weight…
This sweater started when Michele offloaded a a giant ball of camel colored alpaca fiber on me – I figured it was about 8 oz or so and started spindle spinning it into a 2ply lace weight – which is my favorite yarn to spin (as well as knit).
3 oz of lace weight spinning later, I hadn’t made a dent. I was sick of the project, and it turns out that ball of fiber was closer to 12 oz.
(I know, I should have weighed it.)
Thankfully Michele had recently gotten a Hansen miniSpinner and she let me use it to finish spinning the last 9 oz. (Which I don’t have photos of – booooo!)
So, I have 3 oz of very thin spindle spun camel colored alpaca (about 250 yards/228.5 meters), and 9 oz of much thicker miniSpinner spun camel colored alpaca (about 500 yards/457 meters).
750 yards (686 meters) total – not enough for a sweater, and too much for most accessories. At this point, I kind of had my heart set on knitting a sweater out of this handspun yarn.
So, enter 2 oz of beautiful grey BFL,* which I spindle spun into 250 yards (228.5 meters) of lace weight yarn.
*BFL is short for “bluefaced leicester,” which is a type of sheep.
All together everything added up to approximately 1,000 yards (914.5 meters) and 14 oz of handspun yarn. I would be cutting it super close, but I might have just enough yardage for a handspun & hand knit sweater.
In the end, I cut it super close, I only had a couple grams left over, but I knit a sweater out of handspun yarn!
Since this post is already getting a little long, I’ll save the nitty-gritty sweater details for tomorrow.
Seriously, this shawl is keeping me from going crazy.
Still sick, but feeling a bit better than last week.
But I started knitting a new shawl. Yay!
It’s a simple half circle (based on the concentric half circle out of Shawl Geometry II), out of the Verdant Gryphon’s Eidos, colorway “fenris.” It’ll be mostly solid stockinette, with some sort of contrasting stripe at the bottom.
It’s being perfect mindless knitting, which is exactly what I need right now.
Seriously, this shawl is keeping me from going crazy.
Because,
all of my fabric, the rest of my yarn, and many of my clothes are currently sitting in giant plastic Ziploc bags. That’s because my apartment needs to be treated for bedbugs (eww!) We don’t have a full blown infestation (thankfully), but the exterminator did find some evidence of them, so everything needs to be washed and sealed up, and then the apartment can get treated. (It’s absolutely amazing, how much stuff will fit in one apartment.)
But all of that means I hit the pause button on The Self-Made Wardrobe project.
Sad face.
I’ll definitely hit unpause and restart the project at some point, but for the moment, I couldn’t keep it going on top of everything else.
Reorienting.
‘One moment please.’
Pause.
a vase of flowers, and basket of zippers
Working away on The Self-Made Wardrobe. Day 17 was the first of many little black dresses.
A pile of yarn, became a pile of swatches, turned into a row of mounted swatches.
And more yarn came for more swatches.
The sweater has gained sleeves.
And a vase of flowers, and basket of zippers is gracing my coffee table.
