Knitting With Handspun Yarn
Handmade Yarn Needs Extra Calculations or a Flexible Pattern
Aug 28, 2008
With increased interest in the craft of spinning, there is an increasing number of beautiful skeins of handspun yarn available for sale online and in local yarn shops. If you've been temped by a handspun yarn but don't know how or what to knit with it, don't be afraid to take the plunge and knit with handspun. With a little extra preparation or a very flexible pattern you can knit a beautiful, one-of-a-kind project.
What Should I Expect From Handspun Yarn?
Handspun yarn is created by a person who uses either a spinning wheel or spindle to add twist to fiber in order to produce yarn. Within these simple guidelines, handspinners can create a dizzying variety of yarns, from art yarn that contains toys, flowers or pieces of fabric spun in with the fiber, to yarn spun from a variety of natural and synthetic fibers in any weight or thickness.
Handspun yarn can be very smooth and even, but often contains a few sections of yarn that are a little thinner or thicker than the rest. This natural variation is due to the handmade nature of the craft and is considered one of the attractive features of handspun yarn.
I've Got Some Handspun, Now What Can I Knit With it?
Projects that are suitable for knitting with handspun depend on how much yarn you have to work with. Many skeins of handspun are one-of-a-kind and therefore in limited supply, so if you run out of your skein mid-project you'll have to either find another yarn with complementary colors, texture and thickness to finish your project, or rip out your work and start something smaller.
For this reason it is important to calculate the amount of yarn you have available and the amount required for your project to be sure you will have enough. Another option is to knit something that isn't too dependent on gauge or exactly meeting pattern requirements, such as a simple garter stitch scarf or a circular cowl.
Knitting Patterns Suitable for Handspun Yarn
Before starting any project, and especially a project in which you want to knit with handspun yarn, it is important to knit a gauge swatch. This is especially true for handspun because of the natural variation of texture and color in the yarn. Knitting a swatch will give you an idea of what the final knitted fabric will look like, the number of stitches per inch, and the area of fabric/number of stitches per gram of yarn. Armed with this information you can search through free knitting patterns on Ravelry or Knitty and find something that meets your yarn's characteristics.
Jared Flood's Turn a Square hat was designed and knit using handspun yarn, or you can knit a simple vertical garter stitch scarf by casting on approximately 300 stitches onto a 4.5mm circular needle using approximately worsted weight yarn. Knit back and forth until you have almost run out of yarn, bind off and ta-da! You've got a beautiful handmade scarf.
Handspun yarn lends itself extremely well to improvised patterns due to the fact that the knitter will need to calculate how far the yarn will go before getting started, so go ahead and experiment with your own patterns as well as using commercially designed knitting patterns or very flexible patterns with your handspun yarn. Handspun yarn is a joy to knit with and creates variations in color and texture that are beautifully unique.
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