I spun merino roving with my Spanish Peacock Russian support spindles and plied the singles on my wheel to create a 2-ply lace yarn. I had 8 ounces or so of a gray merino fleece and I sent it off to be processed into roving. The resulting yarn is just over 4 ounces and it has a wide range of wraps per inch. It was a challenge to spin and of course, the very thin parts from one ball were plied with the very thin parts of the other ball.
I wanted a nice lacy pattern and selected Brooklyn Tweed's Thayer design. This time around, I slipped both stitches before purling two stitches together through the back loops and that step went much more smoothly. This particular design has lace patterning on the right and wrong side. I also took out one of the 19 stitch repeats to optimize the limited amount of handspun yarn. I used my Knit Picks size 6 straight 10" needles and the entire ball of yarn. I am not set up yet to block with my blocking wires, so I washed the scarf, spun it out, and then let it dry on my drying rack. I'm not happy with the edges and blocking it better would improve the scarf over all. With the wide range of thickness throughout the yarn, I thought that blocking it on the drying rack would be good enough. This scarf is about 8" wide and 74" long and feels very soft with a nice spring to it.
Nice scarf and I love the natural color & of course your handspun is so perfect.
Posted by: Ann | July 17, 2013 at 07:06 AM
Beautiful work! It is amazing that you were able to get a full size scarf out of only four ounces of yarn.
Where did you find a mill that would process just eight ounces of fiber?
Posted by: textillian | July 29, 2013 at 07:31 AM