Look Ma, No Twist!
First off, thank you for all your kind words and compliments yesterday. Like most folks who read this blog, I live in more than one world and my spinning has been doing a lot towards helping me deal with problems that aren't part of my fiber world. To get so much nice feedback about my Rainbow BFL really made my day.
I decided to take the advice of those of you who suggested that it would be okay to leave this yarn as a single. I gave it a nice warm, Eucalin-rich bath to help it relax and get comfortable. It exhausted some more purple dye, but otherwise seemed to like the bath. Then I hung it to dry with a weight at the bottom to keep tension on the skein while it dried.
I tried to get some good pictures with the skein hanging, but my new niddy noddy creates bigger skeins and it was hard to get it all in one picture. You'll just have to trust me when I say that this hank doesn't twist in either direction. Another very pleasant result of the bathing process is that it is now very soft. Not sure if that's the Eucalan or just some relaxing on the part of the wool, but it's a very pleasant result!
I weighed the hank and I have somewhere very close to 1 ounce of yarn. When I used my newly acquired wraps-per-inch tool (yes, I know you can use a ruler, but this little tool is ever so handy and keeps things in place while you're wrapping) I came up with something in the neighborhood of 30 wpi, which makes the yarn somewhere between fingering and lace weight. It's pretty close in diameter to Kid Silk Haze, though it has many more irregularities.
The nice thing about this yarn is that it has relatively long stretches of one solid color that repeat because of the way that I split up and joined the roving. I'd like to make something lacy with it that will show off the stripes. Maybe something with with a little bit of a wave that would create a nice undulating edge. I'm thinking that a simple, not very wide scarf would probably be the ticket -- a nice accent piece to wear with a turtleneck in the winter. So I spent a bit of yesterday evening looking through Barbara Walker's first treasury of knitting patterns in search of the right thing.
(This is definitely one of those books that I keep going back to for inspiration. If you only have one book of knitting charts in your collection, this is the one to pick. The pictures are all in black and white, but everything is photographed well so that you can really get a good sense for the patterns.)
I'm currently leaning towards the good, old standard Feather and Fan stitch pattern (p. 205), a combination of 6 and 8 stitch Razor Shell (i.e. two 8 stitch intervals flanking a 6 stitch rib, p. 206), or the Horseshoe Pattern (p. 209). None of these patterns are too intricate and I think they would all work nicely with the striping. Any other suggestions? I'd like to find something really nice for my first knitting project with my own handspun!
For my very first hand-spun lace project I made a lovely scarf usingthe Japanese feather pattern. The bottom edge was flat but the sides were wavy which was a neat twist on the usual. It was a fun pattern to knit and it turned out to be quite lovely.
Well the yarn is beautiful. I can't wait to see what it turns into :)
The colors are so pretty...I look forward to seeing the finished product.
Love the rainbow! It's sooooo beautiful. Maybe a dropstitch lace pattern for a scarfy thing?
Feather and Fan -- not special enough IMHO. But taking up my sister's drop stitch suggestion and going to look at my Barbara Walkers would mean getting out of the giant chaise lounge. And that's not gonna happen.
;-)
The colours are really beautiful and I'll be keenly waiting to see how it knits up as a single - wonderful colourworks.
My current favorite is vine lace. I feel like I use it for everything. It is a very quick (short) pattern repeat and is completely brainless as far as lace knitting goes. It would make a project that is great for while the TV is on or stuff like that.