Knitting with Handspun

As part of my de-stashing goal for 2016, I have a bit of handspun yarn that I need to use up.  Problem is, I want to use all of it, I don’t want a single scrap left over, so this usually leaves is sitting in my stash, waiting for that special project to come along.  I’ve heard on various podcasts that other spinners have the same issues ‘letting go’ of their handspun.  Maybe they have a luxury fiber stashed away and they don’t think they’re a skilled enough spinner, or maybe their yarn is a bit thick and thin and they don’t want to go through the time of knitting a pattern just to have it turn out not so great because of the yarn thickness.  I’ve had all of these issues at one point, and still struggle with them from time to time.  But I’ve heard enough people say “It’s just yarn” that I’ve slowly started to embrace this philosophy.  It is just yarn.  If you don’t like the way the pattern is knitting up, then you can rip back.  If your yarn is crinkly and doesn’t look as nice as it once did, just give it a soak and it will fluff itself back out.  If you’re having trouble spinning a luxury fiber, then you can always put it down and come back to it later – but you’ll never know until you pick it up.  I’ve found that if I go into a fiber type knowing it is a bit difficult to spin, then I’m more careful when spinning it and it usually turns out great!   But what really convinces me to cast on with handspun is the fact that I just ordered more fiber and can’t justify getting more fiber in when I haven’t even knit with the yarn I’ve already made.  And thus we’ve reached the reason for this blog post.  This week, I’ve been knitting with handspun.

My Malabrigo Nube handspun, to be precise.  This was my first ‘luxury’ fiber purchase.  I do consider merino to be a luxury fiber, although I know others may not.  I don’t knit with it often and it is a bit on the pricey side, so just let me live in my luxury cloud.  Here’s a picture of the fiber braid and a description of the fiber from www.woolery.com, where I purchased the fiber from. 

Merino Roving - Malabrigo "Nube"

Pure merino wool. For spinning or felting. Hand dyed Nube means cloud in Spanish, they call it Nube because it's Malabrigo's merino, Yum!

Malabrigo Nube is a wonderfully soft 100% merino hand painted roving. Nube, Spanish for cloud, is perfect for spinning or felting. Comes in several, hand dyed, beautiful color ways. We absolutely love this beautiful merino fiber when its spun,up. Knitting the hand spun yarn produces a very nice garment which is perfect to wear against the skin. Malabrigo Nube comes in 4 ounces braids.

I spun this on my Ashford Kiwi 2 spinning wheel and didn’t pay much attention to how the colors were spinning.  I just split the braid up into manageable pieces and let the fiber decide.  The colors in the braid were pretty mixed, so it would have been hard to completely get all the orange out of a grey section, for example.  I liked the look of the mix of colors in the braid, so I decided that a barber pole type of yarn wouldn’t be bad looking so that is what I went for.   Here are some pictures of the finished yarn

I only purchased 1 braid of the fiber and got 208 yards of a worsted/bulky weight yarn.  I was going for more of a DK weight, but the fiber fluffed up quite a bit after a soak.  But of course, now the question was what to make with it.   My go-to project for hand spun is a cowl.  I can keep going for as long as I have yarn, it doesn’t require any shaping, and show off the yarn very easily.  I don’t usually follow any sort of pattern, but rather, a sort of recipe:  

·         First: pick a needle size appropriate for your yarn thickness.  For this worsted/bulky, I went with US 10.5.  If I don’t have too much yardage to work with, I’ll go up a needle size or two so that the cowl becomes more airy but also can gain a little length.  If I have a lot of yardage, I might go down a needle size so the cowl fabric will be a bit tighter and warmer.
·         Second: decide on a stitch pattern.  I find cowls are really easy to practice new stitch patterns or showcase an underused stitch.  For her birthday, I knit my mom a cowl using some natural grey BFL handspun and I used a simple basket weave pattern.  I picked this stitch because the equal numbers of knits and purls would mean that the cowl edges wouldn’t roll like Stockinette would.  Also, it is textured enough to be interesting, but also simple enough that it can show off the yarn.  For my Malabrigo yarn, I picked a slip stitch pattern from the Eye of Partridge Heel portion of Hermione’s Everyday Socks.  You can kind of see it in this picture, but on my socks, it turned into more of a waffle texture.

photo from Dreams in Fiber blog

My sock

·         Third: cast on however many stitches you’d like.  I usually go for at least 100 stitches because I like my cowls  on the loose side.  I will admit that I usually end up casting on more than 100 because I overestimate how much of a tail I’ll need for my long tail cast on.  So, in an effort to use up as much yarn as possible, I’ll keep casting on until I am left with about a six in tail.  If I have too much of a tail left, I will undo my cast on and start over, but if it is just adding another 20 or 50 stitches to a cowl, that’s not too big of a deal for me.
·         Finally: knit!  There are still decisions to be made, such as if you want a Garter stitch boarder to help with rolling.  Or maybe you want to add a few lace panels to break up the stitch pattern you chose.  Really, you can do anything that you want and it is sort of freeing to not have to check with a pattern constantly. 

Slip Stich Cowl pattern:

Cast on however many stitches you want.

Row 1:K

Row 2: *k1, sl 1*, rep ** to end

Row 3: K

Row 4: *sl 1, k1*, rep ** to end

Repeat rows 1-4 for as long as you like, end with a k row, and then bind off.

Here's what my cowl looks like so far.  I'm a bit disappointed in the fact that my thick/thin yarn obscures the slip stitch pattern, but it is still looking nice.  At the very least, it is soft and squishy which is really all you need in a cowl.