Wow. I love knitting my own handspun yarn. If you don’t have a wheel, and you are a knitter, I highly recommend learning so that you can knit with something you made! First off, it is so fulfilling to see yarn hanging and drying that is becoming plump and soft. Then, when you touch it, and roll it between your fingers, it is neat to say “I made this”, then when you knit the whole back of a sweater and hold it up poking your finger at the centre of it to check and see that it really is a solid piece of fabric, it is a little like giving birth (minus the pain). You say “I can’t believe you came from me!”
So the sweater. Retrofit is really simple, being stockinette stitch. It has given me a chance to listen to some great audiobooks, and speed up my knitting and thus has moved along quite quickly.
A couple of other recommendations: Read the complete Post.
A couple of weeks ago I started spinning the yarn for my first “real” project. Yes, I did some handspun that is still sitting in my chest waiting to be made into a felted roving ball holder, and I spun the yarn for Seva’s Lace Shawl… but those were simple. There was no particular guage to maintain, in fact the lumpier it was, the better.
I chose the pattern from the Fall Knitty 2008 - Retrofit by Jesse Loesberg. I like it more than his other pattern (Avast) and the Hero Pullover, both of which I was considering until I noticed some things. Avast has cables. Justin notified me that cables are bad for men. (too bad… I love knitting cables) And the Hero Pullover, well… it has DROP SHOULDERS. I don’t know about you, but I think that drop shoulders make men look slumpy. Unless they are standing like the guy in the picture in the magazine all the time, drop shoulders drop. Further more, men rarely stand like the guy in the picture.
Back to spinning. I began slowly, drafting fiber… Read the complete Post.