Early efforts

I've been trying to set myself up with a lot of super easy knitting lately, and over the weekend I sat down with a cup of tea and the disaster that was meant to be a hat that I knit with my very first handspun yarn before Christmas. My job: frogging it so I can remake it into something that won't be a disaster.

Helena has some theories about the product of early handspun efforts - they involve not seeing these yarns as 'wasted fiber' but as part of the journey and so on - which I would like to have it in me to adopt even as I find it ironic that she still describes her own spinning that way when it is gorgeous and has been for ages.

(and did you see what Karen made, on her first weekend with her first wheel? It is to weep.)

That said, my first handspun, with all its overspun segments and underspun bursts and size that ranges from laceweight to superbulky without any warning at all, really, still looks very pretty to me:

I was just beginning to learn how to use my spindle when I did this, using Twisted Fiber Art superwash merino roving in Netherfield. I love these colours together and - yes, I do wish I had yarn in it that I could use for a fitted garment. I know it's journey and all the rest. It's just that all my TFA stuff is precious to me not only because I love it so but because the duty charges when I order it from Canada are so ruinous as to prevent me buying all I want. It can't help but sadden me that I can't just put these colours where I wanted them (on my head, in the form of a hat.)

Still, I can always do a hipster-type misshapen garter stitch scarf, right?


Just maybe not on 5mm needles. You are looking at the sum total of the yarn that I have, and I don't see this making it much farther than a cowl, do you?

Oh dear, I fear another frogging for this poor longsuffering yarn.