This year for me has been one of epic crafting. I realized the other day that I had yet to post about my Shipwreck shawl that I made the first half of the year. I’ve hinted at it here and here, but never did a full post showing off this beauty.

 

It’s one that I consider a masterpiece in my knitting thus far, partly because of the knitting, and partly because it involved my own handspun yarn.

It took me three months to spin the 7 ounces of a merino top in colorway “Baltic Blue.”

 

I spun it worsted, laceweight, 2-plied, and ended up with 2 beautiful skeins equaling 1490 yards. This had been my most consistent and thinnest yarn to-date (I have since spun even better yarns than this!).

In May, I worked for three months to knit my first ever circular shawl, using the Shipwreck pattern. I decided to omit the beads because I’m not a bead person, and I felt that the handspun was so pretty on its own that I didn’t want to add anything else to it. This project reminds me of my first few months working my new job at the church, because this is the project I would take with me to work on during my lunch breaks.

I finished the shawl in July. Almost exactly 6 months from fiber to shawl! Although the circular shawl is not my favorite shape (I’m rather short, so it’s a lot of shawl for a short person), I’ve been enjoying wearing it to church now that we have entered what we consider our “winter” weather.

My favorite way to wear it is folded in half, draped around my shoulders. Or now that it’s a bit cooler, I wear it fully open, scrunched around my neck and thrown over a shoulder, so it looks like a beautiful poncho. I just might make another circular shawl after all…