Friday, August 13, 2010

Throwing my hat in the ring

Here is a cool thing! The 4 oz challenge requires participants to spin 4oz of handpainted fibre, knit a sample, and publish a pattern, between now and the end of September. The fibre has to be from Southern Cross, Hello Yarn, or Spunky Eclectic (like I need an excuse to order from any of them!), and the idea is to produce a set of patterns intended for handspun that will take advantage of the interesting texture and colour properties available to spinners, and get specific about the yarn they're written for. There are not enough patterns that do this!

I ordered four ounces of BFL from Spunky Eclectic, in this colour. It showed up in the mail today. Behold:

venus BFL

DELICIOUS.

My pattern idea involves spinning it into a smooth fingering- or sport-weight yarn and knitting it into gloves with dense lacy scallops—sort of like oyster mittens but finer and more detailed and with fingers. There will be spaces between the yarn overs and their decreases to make zigzags out of any variegation in the yarn, and some purled rounds interspersed to make the colours mingle a little more. I think this would work well for subdued variegation like my yarn will have, or for wilder stripes. It would also be perfectly lovely and not too boring in a solid or relatively solid colour. Or so I hope.

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