From Fiber to FO

On Thursday, I posted my latest pattern, the Streeterville Cowl. It’s the first time I’ve designed something using my own handspun, and I thought you might like to see the whole process, from the fiber to the finished cowl.

At Christmas (2016), I had gotten my first drop spindle, and bought this wool almost immediately after. It was a sample pack of Corriedale top from the Woolery. Corriedale is a type of sheep, and top is a type of fiber preparation.

This was the 2nd yarn I ever spun on my brand new drop spindle. Here’s the single – that means when I spun it from the fiber, before plying it. I tried to divide the fiber in two by weight, and spin both halves evenly, in the same color sequence, so that when I plied them together the colors would match up. The singles were a bit thick-and-thin though, so ended up not being very evenly distributed at all.

That turned out to be a good thing – I love the way the colors blended. When I plied it, I got some sections that were solid color, and some that were mixed.

In the finished cowl, this gave me stripes of solid colors mixed with tweedy sections. As a newbie spinner, I had no idea what the finished project would look like. It was so much fun to start with little fluffy balls of fiber and just see where they led me!