The yarn is some of my first handspun from the wheel that John gave me for Christmas. I spun up a felting kit I had picked up, thinking the smaller amounts might be good for drop spindle spinning. The Shetland wool was actually included with the purchase of the wheel, but was priced around $2.25/oz if I remember correctly.

I relaxed the shetland that I over twisted, but I think I may have loosened it up too much as there are places where it’s knitting up like I’m trying to knit the roving, which is making it really soft, but giving me concerns about the long term durability of the shawl. I may felt it, just to make sure it doesn’t fall apart on me later =)

The felting kit, with the beautiful range of colors, is not available on KnitPicks.com as I write this, but I think it was something like the Romantic or Victorian colorway. It has not been relaxed, nor finished, so the feel of the shawl there is very tight and drawn in.

The shetland has more prickle, but being more relaxed comes across as a softer hand, whereas the felting roving feels quite hard and scratchy.

28 Jan 2015: realized I’m going to need to spin more yarn, as by the sts, I’m at 35% of the way through and need more yarnage soon ….

20 July 2015: School took over my life for a bit, and I need to post finished pictures soon.

I got through all of the shetland wool I spun up, getting me to about 50% of stitches worked. I had some mostly Jacob sheep millends that I had spun up on a drop spindle. The previously plied yarn I used right away, and then I had to ply the remaining singles of the Jacob millends because those spun up very fine (on a 20 gram spindle they really should have!) I should have relaxed the ply because that is horribly hard now, but it is what i is.

I still had to spin more yarn for the last 15-20% of stitches, and for the last stretch I used some of the white, breed unknown sheep’s wool I got at Rumplestiltskin’s.

I bound off using the yarn over bind off worked with a crochet hook, washed and blocked the shawl. Final measurements are finger-tip to finger-tip (with room to stretch some more), about 70 inches, and shoulder to wrist at the midpoint from top edge to the bottom, about 30 inches.

The relaxed yarn is so much more comfortable than the rest of it that I think I shall not believe so much that my yarn needs to have more twist! more twist! when I spin it up. If my yarn pulls itself into curls I think I will have to admit I over spun it.