A while back I’d set aside some of my bulky weight handspun yarns for the purpose of knitting something wintry and colorful. I stored them in this drawstring backpack to keep out moths. I ordered a 40″ #11 circular needle for the purpose of knitting these yarns. That was a couple years back….yeah, time flies.
The next question was: what to knit with these saved yarns? I needed a new winter scarf for sure, so off I went to Ravelry to search for a pattern. That’s the fun part 🙂 I narrowed my search to bulky yarns and #11 needles, and it came up with some good ones. I decided upon the Color Wash shawl by Taiga Hilliard, a boomerang shaped shawl/large scarf. I’ve always wanted one of these and now I’m finally getting to knitting one for myself. The pattern is free, which is really nice.
Yarns I Used
I started off thinking that I would do another motley scarf, because of the variety of yarns I had ready, but I ended up using just 3: my handspun, held together with Mary Maxim mohair for the main color. The MM mohair was a gift from daughter. It was a yarn from her stash, and she’d given it to me for my Enchanted Mesa sweater. It had been a huge skein that went really far. I just asked her about it and she said she bought it from All Points Yarn, a local yarn store. The contrast color I used was leftovers of Joann Sensations Angel Hair yarn. It’s a discontinued yarn that’s bulky weight and super soft for an acrylic yarn. I’d knitted a sweater with it that I never blogged about. Someday I hope to, but for now I had extra yarn from that project and it worked really well as the contrast color for this shawl.
A Roadblock Appeared And How I Got Past It
All was going well with it until I began to run out of the MM mohair. I was about 2/3 through when this happened. I couldn’t knit on without it because it already had the mohair flow. Mary Maxim mohair was discontinued at some point, so I had to source another kind. Luckily there are lots of laceweight mohair yarns available. I went with Rowan Kidsilk Haze, which was a treat to myself. It’s the most expensive, but also has the biggest color range. I went with the Apple color, #720, seen below:
I ordered this from Love Crafts, which I didn’t realize was in the UK. I saw an address in Delaware on their site and thought they were in the US. After I placed my order I saw that the postal service was Royal Mail, and then I knew! I live on the west coast and thought “oh no” when I realized how long it might take to arrive. The service was truly excellent though, considering how far it traveled. It took about 8 days to arrive. Really stellar delivery service on both continents..
Progress Pics
So now that I have the kidsilk that I need to finish this, I can pick up from where I left off:
I’ll write another post when it’s finished, hopefully with some pics of me wearing it 🙂
Until then, thanks for stopping by.
Sewcoordinated 