Oliver Twist

I have started and stopped projects from my own handspun maybe a handful of times, and I have one really massive project that’s been floating around in my head ever since I got my first spindle and fiber in hand, but I had never actually completed anything from my own handspun until now.

This is yarn I spun from fiber purchased from Flawful Fibers; she called the colorway Valkyrie, which was at least half the reason I purchased it. In the braid, it looked very starkly red and black, but I LOVE how it mellowed with the drafting and spinning and plying. I originally spun the yarn vascillating between wanting sock yarn and laceweight, and it shows my inconsistent thinking, but it turned out really beautiful on its own and I ultimately decided I wanted to knit something very simple from it to show it off.

There are somewhat random, beautiful grey stripes that run throughout the yarn that took me by pleasant surprise.

So these are just simple 40-stitch stockinette tubes, with an 8-stitch afterthought thumb opening knit into the tube with a scrap yarn (resulting in an 18 stitch thumb, ultimately, when I picked up one stitch on each corner to try and avoid holes); knit in marginally fingering-weight yarn on size 6 US Addi Turbo needles. (I think. Must try and confirm needle size. That’s the ballpark, anyway. Since the Blog has stood in for my memory more than once, I really ought to confirm that for myself.)

I have plenty of yarn leftover, so I may either knit another pair of these mitts with some kind of patterning in them, just for fun, or I may pick up and knit from the wrist down on these to extend the length; right now they’re very sort of Regency hobo looking, very Oliver-Twist-looking (hence the title of this post), but the wind still creeps up my coat sleeves and makes my forearms cold. Also contemplating adding on mitten flip-tops. Time will tell.

Anyway, I leave you with two more shots of the colors this roving produced in a simple two-ply spin, and a gentle nudge in the direction of Flawful Fiber’s shop. Only because I love you, you understand.