Ravellenic Rumpus

Since I started spinning, it took a while for me to start knitting with my own handspun yarns… I would tend to keep them and cherish them simply as skeins of yarn.  One of the first skeins of HelloYarn that I ever spun was a combination of two colorways on different fiber bases – Grim on Superwash Merino/Bamboo/Nylon and Garland on Targhee – the two went together surprisingly well 🙂  After allowing the skein to sit in my stash for a suitable period of time, I decided that yarn needed to be featured prominently in a sweater….so I knit this:

Finishing it off, just in time to take it with me to Portland for a temporary work assignment.  Fast forward a year or two, and I found myself with the remaining four ounces or so of that skein. But what to knit?  Well, the Ravellenic games were just getting ready to go and I had no project selected.  Amy of Spunky Eclectic came to the rescue with a shawl recipe of sorts – released just in time and accompanied by a knit along.  So I picked up the yarn, selected one of my own handdyed yarns to pair it with and knit I did…

…and knit and knit and knit…

until I had a shawl about the size of a queen sized bed 😛 I’ve a bit of a thing with numbers and mild OCD, so the pattern repeats got a little bit out of control.  My version of the shawl begins with a section of stockinette, has garter transitions, several panels of fishnet lace, a section of two of moss stitch, and is bound off with hundreds and hundreds of wee picot points.

The Rumpus Shawl Recipe is very straightforward and offers up plenty of options for customization.  If you’re looking for a fun and simple shawl to knit, this pattern will give you some great material to get started – and it’ll let you play around with simple shawl design and lace pattern transitions.

Finished, this shawl shawl is 8 ounces of yarn, measures a full 8 feet across the top, and 4 feet down to the point.  I had less than a yard remaining of each of the yarns when I completed the bind off.  Folded in half, it makes for a very warm wrap 🙂 I’m looking forward to getting more use out of it once the cold weather sets in.

For more photos, have a look at it on Ravelry.