Tuesday 5 October 2010

FO- Handspun Annis Shawl

If left to my own spinning devices, I spin really super-fine laceweight. Spinning big, thick lofty yarn is really hard for me. I either have to make enough plies to get the thickness I want, or sit there and concentrate on my spinning so I won't slip into laceweight mode. I'm working on it.

Anyway, I took most of the summer off from the wheel. Between all the traveling and not having air conditioning during a rather uncomfortable summer, I didn't exactly feel inspired.

My first spinning project when I got back to treadiling was- Surprise!- a fine 2-ply laceweight.

I got a bit over 450 yards from 4 oz of roving. I decided to make the Annis Shawl from last Spring's issue of Knitty.

Antic 820

It's a great pattern. You cast on almost 400 stitches for the bottom edge, work the lace charts, and then the body of the shawl is just short rows.

Antic 823

The nuups were a pain in the ass, but I'm happy with the results.

Antic 839

The lace chart took me about a week to complete, and the short row body just a couple days. It blocked out really nice and large.

Antic 829

It's warm and lofty- a great fall layering piece.

The specs:
The Annis Shawl by Susanna IC. I used about 420 yards handspun laceweight alpaca from Winter's Gone Farm roving. I used US size 10 needles for a nice, loose cast on and the rest of the shawl was knitted on US size 8's.

4 comments:

  1. Yea those Nupps are intense but it's a fun pattern otherwise. I'm wearing mine right now! Lovely spinning!

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  2. I love it! I always feel like shawls require thousands of yards of laceweight, but not so!

    The Bee - she likes to spin the laceweight. One day, I will update my blog with photos of all that I've spun this last year.

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  3. Hi. Lovely shawl. I'm just about to start mine. Which cast on method did u use? It's not specified in the pattern

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    Replies
    1. Oh, this was so long ago I don't remember specifically. I probably did a knitted cast on as I haven't used a long-tail in years, and when you are casting on hundreds of stitches it is really hard to estimate the right amount of yarn for your tail! I did go up a couple needles sizes for the cast on- I think that is essential to making sure you don't have a wonky, bunched-up shawl at the end.

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