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…
As soon as I saw the name of this fiber I just had to have it: “Just Ducky!” It reminded me of my sister’s love of rubber ducks, so I was excited to get this colorway of yellow, white, black, brown, red, green and shades of colors in between. This was my first time spinning superwash merino, and I have to say that this was the easiest thing I’ve ever spun. It took me less than 8 hours in one weekend to spin and ply this lovely yarn. 
This yarn also represents my first attempt at fractal spinning, which is a technique in color theory. Basically, you take the fiber and split it in half length-wise, and then spin the two halves at different color repeat length intervals. The first half you spin in one long color repeat, and then the second half you keep the repeats in the same order, but you split it in half again and then spin in chunks. This allows the singles when 2-plied to line up in a way that allows for a dynamic color explosion! In some places the colors will line up perfectly, and then in other places it will vary, creating an interesting color palette that’s just hard to describe in words. 
Mallard 
On Friday night while eating dinner, I got a phone call from one of my best friends saying, “pack your stuff, we’re taking you to Cali like right now.” So within half an hour I was on the road to cooler weather and a much-needed girls’ getaway with my two besties. Unfortunately it was too dark to knit on the way out, but I definitely got plenty of knitting time the rest of the weekend. 
Knitting in the morning on the balcony, with a view of Long Beach Bay. 
Knitting on Huntington beach.
It’s no secret that I’m fond of using non-pastel colors for baby blankets, especially when it comes to boys (for example, I think bright red is a great boy color, don’t you?). When my mom unloaded some of her stash on me, I was thrilled when I found enough of this forest green colored yarn to make not just one but two baby blankets. Since most of my pregnant friends are having boys, I thought it would be a great boy blanket color. 
Kountingsheep 