She Was Twisted

I think I just found my next “real” knitting project. It is the Blissful Blue Top by Lion Brand.

I call it “real” simply because it is knitting in difficult stitch patterns, and having to follow a pattern. Both of these are something I usually avoid, as I like to make up my patterns and let my handspun yarn do all the work as far as visual interest. Not that either is any better than the other – just a different style of knitting. I have not tried to follow a pattern in awhile, so this should be fun!

Isn’t it just wonderful! And from Lion Brand – which doesn’t always have patterns to my taste. (too much fun fur and novelty yarn) So now I have to figure what yarn I want to use, or if I’m daring enough to try to spin up enough yarn for the project.

Stay tuned!

I’ve been playing around with spinning handspun curly doll hair yarn out of hand-dyed Leicester wool locks. But I hadn’t really thought about how it would work with knitting. So I set out to try it out.

I used up some scrap wool locks that, due to all the excess vegetable matter trapped in the locks, were pretty much worthless for anything. I also had some roughly carded Romney wool that also needed to be taken out to the garden due to all the junk in the wool, so I thought these two wools would be perfect for my test swatch.

I alternated the curly with the carded wool, then threw in a few lines of merino wool top for contrast. I spun exactly the way I would for the doll hair – a bit overtwisted, nice and messy.

Here is my skein.

Pretty!

I chose to knit a basic swatch using 3 stitches of garter around the edges to keep the swatch flat. Size 11 needles, at approximately 3 stitches per inch.

I love how it came out! Especially if the curly parts were alternated with more of a smooth top. Much to my surprise, however, much of the personality of the curly yarn was lost in the stockinette stitch, but not too much to bother me. The backside seemed to absorb all the craziness, which is typical.

10 pounds of raw Leicester wool locks are awaiting!