Spectral Gradient
Quite some time ago, I spun up a gradient from Southern Cross Fibre Island Paradise – it’s been marinating in my stash ever since…
I finally decided to pair it up with one of my own handdyed yarns – a SpritelyGoods limited edition semi-solid colorway on sylph – I think it was called Nighttime Sky and knit it up into a Spectra shawl/scarf. I especially liked how the little wedges looked like stained glass as they worked up.
The scarf knits up quite quickly, and knitting wedges became somewhat addictive. The pattern is quite clever, knitting up little stockinette windows/wedges using short rows within a garter stitch border. I carried the yarns along, so only had to weave in ends at either end of the project.
Cast on around Thanksgiving, I finished the scarf just before midnight of the New Year…I wound up knitting until I had no more border-color yarn (binding off with less than 4 yards remaining) – and a total count of 79 wedges. The scarf is rather long, and surprisingly (to me anyhow) that it stayed mostly golden hued for the wedges – it started transitioning to green, but I never did make it into the light blue section of the yarn before having to bind off.
Because I failed to take notes (shame on me) I don’t remember what size needles I used – but by the looks of the cable, it could very well have been a US5 as called for in the pattern – but I’m not 100% sure on that. If I had it to do over again, I might have gone with a smaller needle size just to tighten up the fabric a hair and it would have been nice to have more colors from the gradient appear in the finished project, but overall, I’m quite pleased with how it turned out.
As for combining different types and grists of wool (the handspun is a fulled fingering to sport weight single spun from shetland wool and the handdyed is fine-fingering weight superwash merino), it worked out fine – I suspect the forgiving nature of garter stitch helped with that aspect. If you’re looking for an easily memorizable and portable project, I do recommend Spectra.
