We are now at extreme cold weather alert the 10th of this winter. It has been a full 29 days under -15C. This week just added to the stats. It is no mistake that I was working with my brightest, happiest handspun yarn.
Melvin observes House Rules about wet wool
The shawl pattern is by Susan Ashcroft, TGV (tricot grande vitesse – High Speed Knitting). The projects on Ravelry are very close to 2,000 strong. Of those, 68 projects record the use of handspun yarn.
Sunshine in a knit. Seriously
I worked this shawl with 3.75 mm needles for the garter body, and 3.5mm needles for the long rows of ribbing. This gave an open gauge with my chain-plied yarn, and it has tons of drape.
It is an easy design to knit-up. The later rows are very long, and that slows progress a bit for me at least.
Good to the last drop: yarn overage
That would be the yarn leftovers. I used up the 408.46 yards of handspun. It was planned too (I swear!) How? By casting-off, raveling, and weighing how much that took. It was 4g just to cast-off that long, long edge. I wanted all the orange; as simple as that.
Such a joy in the wearing
A crescent scarf is what it is
At the deepest point my TGV is just 11″ edge-to-edge. It wraps best for me with the deep edge to the front. Much more scarf-like than shawl-like in the wearing!
The ribbing detail
In an effort to avoid the Rocks of Boredom for yonder ribbing section, I turned it into a Baby Cable Rib. The recipe is in Barbara G. Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns.
The variation is subtle in the FO but it improved the knitting up for me. I knit socks. So I know that 2×2 ribbing is great just in moderation.
Sure, this shawl is bringing the bright back. It’s not just about Handspun! and Accent for the Drab! though. It’s also keeping turtleneck shirts at bay. And that dear readers, is a really good thing.
In sum: easy to wear; bright; not a turtleneck shirt. Yay!
How long did that take?
Let me walk you through the timeline. We will wake the TKK archives up a bit too. In April 2012, I won the awesome braid from Nicole at Stringtopia’s doorprize party.
Musewings’ Stringtopia 2012 doorprize
It sat on my fibre shelf until I wanted a new project for the 2013 Stringtopia event. Thus, it snuck into that April’s Making Progress post like this.
The seedling of the shawl: April 2013
As I reported, a lot did get spun at the Golden Lamb, 2013 String Thing. That closely followed with a full spindle in May, 2013.
I was so stoked
The second ply was spun by early July 2013, and I had yarn to show for it during the Tour de Fleece. It positively loves the camera.
Shawl-in-waiting: July 2013
The only stage of this journey that didn’t get blogged on was when I whipped it out on January 9, 2014 and started to knit. Here is how she looked on the needles!
TGV shawl when she was in progress.
The knitting time was on & off between January & last Sunday, February 23, 2014.
Nicole, you have my deepest thanks for such an epic doorprize. I love it so much!
March 1, 2014 at 11:57 am
Lovely shawl.
April 6, 2014 at 3:52 am
I really is the perfect way to show off hand spun, I have a tgv on the needles which I have been putting off completing, those rows do get long and I think the ribbing is putting me off picking it up again. spinning as I go might be the trick…
Maybe I’ll see you at this years TdF 🙂