She Was Twisted

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!

Test knitting with your own handspun is the best ever. You get to spin something you might not otherwise spin – all for yourself. This one is not too daring, however. All I did was spin scraps of handpainted rovings, separated by a solid color, alternating thick sections with thin sections. I didn’t pay any attention to what colors worked or not. I just grabbed one after the other. So far, so good!

Eventually this will be a neck warmer-type thing. I’m hoping I have enough yarn to get the length I need. Good stuff!