Fiber Fool

I believe I mentioned when I shared my competed Urchin that I was hoping to use the other half of the fiber to knit some thrummed mittens. My original plan was to knit the mittens with the singles. Upon completion of Urchin I discovered I loved the 2-ply when knit up, even though I was only sort of ho-hum about it in the skein form. Given that I was underwhelmed with the skein and overwhelemed with the knit fabric on the 2-ply I decided I couldn’t make my decision for the mittens until I had evaluated the knit fabric. I didn’t want the singles to be the opposite. My fears did not come to fruition. I love the singles fabric as well!

I knit the singles swatch on US5 turbos while at SnB last night. At 6.75 sts/in I was thinking it might be a bit too light for thrummed mittens, but the decision was that it would be nice and should still be warm since that is created by the thrums. So, I figure I have about two hours or so of spinning ahead of me and then I should be ready to knit the mittens.

I still have a pretty nice bit of yardage left of the 2-ply so I’m thinking I’ll knit that into a sideways garter cuff, perhaps with a button. I like the contrast of the singles fabric and the 2-ply fabric and I think it’ll tie the mittens in nicely with Urchin. I’m sooo excited to work on this now! I’m almost sad that I was so put off by the swatching that I’ve wasted a week on it. *sigh* Oh well, maybe I’ll remind myself of this the next time I’m procrastinating on swatching.

I’m chuffed with my singles swatch! Look how darn consistent it is! The little inconsistencies will be unnoticeable once thrummed. Note, I must have gotten just the right amount of twist in there too as the swatch isn’t really biasing either! I even washed the swatch to see if it would waken the twist and cause biasing, but it blocked square quite easily.

This is my first real project intentionally using singles (i have one project that I did using some very early hand spun, some of which was singles) and I can promise it won’t be the last. In general I think I prefer yarns with more dimension than singles, and often even 2-ply. That said, I think there is a time and place to use singles and 2-ply yarns. In this case, the singles work because a basic thrummed mitten doesn’t need a dimensional yarn or the fluffy air of the plied yarn because the thrums will provide the insulation and the design appeal. And in this case, I think the less muddied colors of the singles will be a nice contrast to the 2-ply and will help the thrums stand out a bit more.

Now, to find the time to spin and knit the mittens. It would fabulous to have them to wear while in MN!