Spun Colour Vest

Last October I spun this colourful yarn, written up here https://montjoyeblog.wordpress.com/2020/10/16/doubling-spun-colour/

I had been thinking it would be nice knitted up as the front of a vest. Turns out there was nearly enough for a whole vest. I got it into my head that I wanted the original colourway nearest my face, which made finding a pattern more difficult than it should have been. In the end I used a bottom up, seamed pattern (Inez by Emily Nora O’Neil) but made a bunch of changes. I started at the base of the neckline with a provisional cast on, knitted down or backwards for a bit to get a feel for how far the yarn would go.

I put this picture in because of all the ones I took, it shows the colours most accurately.

Then I went back and knitted the front shoulders, introducing some brown merino/alpaca handspun to make up the balance of the needed yarn. Then I returned to knitting backwards to finish the front, introducing the the second colourway and knitting the two in alternating two row blocks until the first ran out.

I changed the position of the body shaping from the side seams to two vertical lines below the bust points. I also widened the body from underarm level for better fit. The back was knitted in the more standard bottom up way. The third colourway got introduced when the plain second colourway matched the height it was in the front.

Eventually I finished both pieces and blocked them. Even after all the thinking and planning about colour placement, i’d do it differently if I was starting over, but this is appealing enough as is.

Then I got the seams sewn. All good. Then it was time to to the borders on the neckline and armholes. I had one attempt, failed and got scared of that. Roadblock hit in January, I put this away and knitted two whole projects before I felt brave enough to deal with it. Last Saturday i swore I’d not start another knitting project until this one was finished, and I wanted to knit, so I just had to do it. After all that procrastination and feeling offput, it wasn’t even that hard. I did all the borders yesterday afternoon and evening. The borders are quite minimal, just a thin line, but they serve well to smooth and stabilise the edges. I had been worried that the armholes were too deep, but the border sorted that problem out.

Here is a pic that shows how the brown hem and shoulders are worked to join to the coloured yarn in a way that looks like it was designed that way, which I suppose it was.

Here is the obligatory picture of it on me. I wasn’t in much of mood to smile at the camera but I do like my new vest really.

That’s one lot of handspun turned into a wearable thing. Now I get to embark on a new knitting project.

Seaweed Shawl

Back in early December last year, I decided to spin up some blended alpaca and silk tops that I had bought on a whim. I wanted something more than a standard 100g skein so I added in 60g of merino in lichen green and indigo blue left over from other projects.

I had a fancy to knit a lace shawl so I spun as fine as I could manage and over 5 weeks, produced 160g of approximately lace weight yarn. Really it was anywhere between cobweb and sport weight but primarily lace to light fingering weight. I was still pretty pleased with myself.

I liked the look of this but felt I might wear it more if I put it through a blue dyebath. So I did.

It was then saying “ocean” to me, so I went looking for patterns that also spoke of this. I settled on “Ocean Scarf” by Eunny Jang but had trouble getting the pattern. So frustrating! I persevered though and found the chart for the body of the shawl eventually. I knitted a couple of repeats of the main pattern and then reluctantly decided I wanted it wider, so I frogged it and started over with an extra motif. Yes, much better.

Yes that is a provisional cast on because I wanted to try my hand at a knitted on border. This was confusing for a bit but fine once I figured out how it worked. Very happy to have conquered another technique. I used a border called “Normandy lace” but expanded it to get a double zigzag to echo the main pattern.

Somehow I ended up in a very tight game of yarn chicken. I had kept records and calculated carefully but must have lost count somewhere. In an attempt to avoid having to reknit the last section, I swapped to slightly smaller needles halfway through the last border.

It was tense there in the last stages but I won!

Having thoroughly proven again that I enjoy lace knitting, I invested in a set of blocking wires which happily arrived a little before I finished. Here she is all pinned out, waiting for the afternoon sun.

I was so pleased with it that I couldn’t resist trying it out even before sewing in the ends. It has come out pretty much exactly the shape I wanted and i love the pattern.

I actually think of it as the Luidaeg shawl, but not everyone has read the Seanen McGuire’s October Daye books