Friday 17 May 2013

Making Things from Handspun Part 3.... or is it 4

This is part of an ongoing series on making this from small amounts of handspun. The posts are slightly sporadic, and purely depend on me making something from some handspun, and as ever there just aren't enough hours in the day to spin and knit all the things I want to!

All the previous posts have featured something made just from handspun. I often only spin 100g or maybe 200g, so yardages are usually quite small, and as a result I make hats, or baby cardigans, or fingerless mitts or shawls. However, even if you don't want to spin enough yarn for a jumper you can still use you handspun in a larger project. 



This is Stilwell by Jared Flood. It's a lovely modern take on quite a traditional jumper style. I made a few modifications, the body is longer, as are the arms. Both are quite cropped in the original pattern, and I know that if I'm wearing a warm wool jumper I want to cover my wrists, and not have a draft up my back when I'm sitting down. 
It's knitted using some Troon Tweed from Texere. I love this yarn, it's an old fashioned oiled Aran weight, proper wool, and wears like iron, but isn't too scratchy. The colourwork though, is all handspun. The snowflake motif is using some Merino, Baby Camel and Alpaca I bought from Marianne at Fluff n Stuff, the border on the motif is just using my BFL/Baby Camel blend. In total I probably used under 200g of the handspun, so perfect for using up smaller amounts of more expensive indy blends. 
You do have to try to match the weight of your commercial yarn and the pattern, but it's amazing how you can get away with a difference in thickness. Here's the reverse of the colourwork section and you can see my handspun was quite a bit thicker. 





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