Hello everyone, it’s been a while since I last wrote a blog post – I haven’t had much spare time to play with fibre and I’ve been trying to wash as many fleeces as possible while the weather is still dry (I have been optimising my suint method, but that’s a post for another time). Anyway, without further ado, onto a finished project!
Since this was my first attempt at knitting with my handspun yarn, I decided to use small simple patterns, but wanted to see how the wool behaved on different needle sizes. I’m certainly not a very experienced knitter and for some reason I find calculating tension gauges confusing, so unfortunately I have no such data for these projects, just my experiments. Happily, my handspun yarn doesn’t fall into any standard size/weight category as I spun it with the intention of making it uneven (some sections are about 3x the size of others). For both projects I decided to use moss stitch to accentuate the uneven squishy nature of the yarn, which I think it did perfectly.
The Cowl
This was the first of the two projects and my first time using circular needles. I cast on an uneven number of stitches onto 6mm circular needles (the only size I have) and just continued knitting rounds of moss stitch until it reached a length I was happy with. In my enthusiasm to use the circular needles, I confess I did forget the importance of checking the stitches don’t get twisted at the start and I knitted about 4 rows before noticing something was wrong!
The Fingerless Gloves
For the gloves I adapted a vintage pattern (pictured left) that I had used before to make a present for a family member. It uses size 11 & 9 needles. I didn’t change much, just knitted the cuff and finger tops in moss stitch instead of 1x1rib. I was surprised how versatile my handspun was as it was just as easy to knit on smaller 3mm needles as on the 6mm and didn’t distort the shape of the gloves.
I love the design of these gloves, they are very comfortable, the cuff goes well over your wrist and the fingers are a bit longer than standard.
I was very pleased with how these projects turned out; I only used about 3 balls/bobbins full of wool on both projects collectively. They are extremely warm, very soft and a beautiful colour (matt brown and grey tones with a subtle pearly lustre). They also have the added advantage of making me feel like I’m about to journey through Middle Earth when I put them on!
Happy Crafting!
Loose Ends 