The blizzard is keeping us indoors today, so I used the morning to finish off the Aran Sweater. It’s a heavy sweater, but the handspun merino makes for a smooth hand and the aran patterns are stretchy making for a really comfortable sweater that is quite warm. Perfect for winter!
Here the shoulders have been knit together, the neck band knitted and the sleeves attached.
The sweater is inside out and pinned together for the sewing of the side seams.
Sweater completely finished.
I finally filled a bobbin with the merino/tencel honey-colored top; I breathed a sigh of relief and realized I needed to spin a bobbin of something different, just for variety and to keep my sanity. Focusing on spinning top that is that fine and slippery required lots of concentration.
So, this week I switched to some 100% merino top; it’s a multicolored top with strands of honey, orange and pink (The color is called “Cassis”). When spun it has a pinkish brown/orange cast. It will make a really attractive sweater. I pretty quickly filled up that bobbin. It’s much faster spinning than the merino/tencel blend.
Now I’m back to spinning the merino/tencel, hoping to get another bobbin done so I can make a two ply yarn and try knitting a swatch to see how the yarn knits up.
I’ve started a natural white sweater with the white Correidale yarn I spun a few weeks ago. I’m knitting it loosely, so that it will be a good sweater for spring. I’m putting in some yoke designs with some navy blue mohair. So far the dark blue looks good with the natural white yarn.
Here’s the completed yoke patterned sweater that I pictured the beginnings of in a previous post. The darker blue is a corriedale handspun yarn and the light blue is merino handspun. Both are very fine wool, so the sweater feels soft and cuddly on. The pattern is from Elizabeth Zimmermann’s book “Knitting Around” (Schoolhouse Press) using her percentage system. I was delighted at the results from combining these two yarns: I didn’t have enough of either for a sweater (I ran out of the darker blue completely, having just enough to do a border for the hat.), but the combination together was enough for a sweater. I will have to learn to buy 1 1/2 pounds of carded wool for a sweater instead of just a pound!
The matching hat is knitted from the same wool yarn; it was made using a pattern I picked up at the Woods Hole Knitting group a week ago. It’s called a “Scrunchie Hat”; it’s easy to knit in the round and it is quite attractive on the head. I’m always delighted to find good hat patterns.
Averill Mountain Crafts 