Yarn: My handspun, approximately sport weight, 283 yards.
Needle: 4.5mm
Back in early 2014 I spun some lovely fibre from
Spin City (colourway
Bombay)
It's got all sorts of lovely bits and bobs in it, firestar, angelina, and merino, in shades of pink and blue. It was the first time I had spun from a batt (rather than roving) and it was great fun to do. I spun about half of the batt onto one bobbin, and then the other half on another. I plied them together with a basic 2-ply, and to make sure it all got used I Andean-plied the last few yards.
When I have hand-spun yarn I'm always torn about making something from it. The yarn itself is a finished thing, but it's also full of potential to be something else, something even more beautiful. In the past I've made hats, mittens, and shawls. I'd love to be brave and make a sweater or something, but I'd have to spin a greater length of yarn than I usually do.
This is about 280 yards for the 100g. I made a lovely triangle shawl from 240 yards of handspun in the past, so I thought that might be nice in this yarn too. The previous version is a little on the small side, but part of that is that I worked it at a firmer gauge than I want to work this yarn.
I selected some lovely beads from my bead stash. They're clear beads, so they don't clash with the very multi-coloured yarn.
The pattern I've chosen to use is
A Wide Triangle from
Victorian Lace Today by Jane Sowerby. It's a really simple garter-stitch pattern, with picots along the edge. It's worked sideways. which has the benefit that you can maximise your yarn usage. I weighed the yarn before I started and it came in at a lovely 108g.
As instructed I strung the beads onto the yarn before beginning, and I strung a few extras in case my shawl ends up needing more than the pattern as written. As these are small beads I strung them using a crochet hook.
I decided that about 8g of the yarn should be reserved for the center section of neither increasing nor decreasing. This leaves 100g for the rest of the shawl. I stopped increasing at around 58g remaining, and worked the 6 apex rows.
Sadly, when I got to about 60 rows remaining, I weighed the remaining yarn. There was 10g left, and I calculated I needed about 20g to finish. So with a little sadness, I pulled back to before the straight section and re-knit from about 63g remaining instead. Unfortunately, this was still not enough, so I had to rip back a second time.
I finally (with a little fudging) made it to the end, I had to add a couple of extra decreases so it's not 100% symmetrical, but then it's handspun so it wouldn't be anyway.
Verdict: This pattern is a joy to knit. It's so simple and it really shows off the handspun yarn nicely. This yarn has turned out sort of variegated, which is fun. It's a bit of a pain to pin out every single picot when blocking this scarf, but honestly it's well worth the extra time in blocking to get a nice sharp picot edge. If anything, I could have used even larger needles to get an even airier fabric.
I'm not sure if the decreases use more yarn than the increases, or if my spinning is a bit uneven, or perhaps a bit of both. I'd love to make this yet again, or possibly some of the other variations on this shawl. I previously made the Ruffled Fichu, which is basically the same design with a ruffled edge instead of the beaded picots, (pictured left). I used significantly more yarn on that one though; 850 yards in two different yarns. It's like a triangular blanket and I love it!
