When I started spinning on a drop spindle I really wanted to make entire knitted items out of my own hand spun yarn. The first hand dyed roving that I bought was purple (of course) and from my first trip to Distaff Day at Peachtree Handspinners Guild.. While I was there I asked whether 8oz of roving would be enough for Clapotis from knitty because that’s what I was itching to make, and most were in agreement that I would be able to at least make a half-clapotis with it. Little did I realize that spinning an entire 8oz of roving on a spindle was a major undertaking.. and was more suited to when I had a wheel. I also found out that merino (which that fiber was) would pill like crazy and wouldn’t be something that I’d want to make a shawl out of… so I put the idea away for a later date.
At Christmas this year I was gifted with 8oz of Corriedale pencil roving from Crown Mountain Farms from my friend Jane in some gorgeous purple shades.. and I knew instantly that I would spin it up for a half-clap of my very own. This is the first bobbin of that fiber (spun at Jodi’s studio in Athens) washed, wound into a ball, and knit up on size 10 needles. I’m in LOVE with this scarf. I’m using the directions from K-Pixie website and the “clapotis by the row” spreadsheet and so far I’m impressed with how quickly this thing is motoring along. I started it about a week ago (the progress in the photos is a few days old now) and I’m actually on the 7th drop-stitch row- its not nearly as boring when you only have about 35 stitches on the needles instead of over 100 and I think I’ll get a lot more wear out of this than the shawl version. I’ve had a lot of pooling of colors up farther but I’ve decided to just let the yarn do what its going to do and not tink back to remove any ’stripes’. I know that many people are not a fan of this pattern (to put it mildly.. ) but I think it really shows off a hand spun or hand dyed yarn while making it the center of attention rather than drowning the features of the yarn in a lace type design.
Unfortunately it was nearly 80F here today (!!!) and there doesn’t seem to be any scarf wearing weather in the future. I do think that if I get it done quickly enough that I can still wear it to the bus stop in the morning without looking like a crazy person who is just looking for an excuse to wear knitwear.