Sheep to Shawl!

I knew better than to think I'd get it done for 'Capetember'. Even though I started it back in June! Last year, a lovely friend gave me a Shetland sheep fleece. This lovely friend even washed it, first! But, it sat for almost a year, waiting for the project it was intended for to happen. That depended on another friend, who's schedule went whacko, leaving me with this lovely fleece. My friend (who gave it to me) finally said, "It doesn't HAVE to be for them - it's yours, and I'd love to see you make something for yourself with it!"

So, I processed it, cleaning the vm (vegetable matter) out, fluffing and carding it. Ok, I didn't card all of it. After a while, I decided to just separate and fluff it to spin on my Navajo spindle - also my first big spinning project - and the "art yarn" that results for a brand new a beginner.  But, I was impatient, so started nålbinding as soon as the first ball of yarn was done. An interesting detail about nålbinding, is that due to the nature of the craft, there are no patterns. There are guidelines, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel, exactly. But each and every item is unique. To add yet another element of surprise to this project, I'd never made a shawl, in any form. The only other item I'd done in nålbinding was a tiny bowl. I was truly winging everything about this whole project!

The fleece was a lovely two-tone one, so I simply divided the two tones into two piles, and used the natural coloring to my advantage. That worked out well, but even without practicing using my natural dyes, I learned some things through this project, that I'll carry through to the next one - and yes - there will be a next one. But, not right away. One of the things I learned was that nålbinding with so called "art yarn" is often... a not-so-fun challenge. The effect is a happy one, but not something I want to do again, any time soon. So, I'll be working hard to improve my spinning. Another thing I learned is that - at least in nålbinding - I have a lot of work to do, to improve my turns, when increasing and decreasing. Both are easy, inside a row, but at the turns? Not so much. The last major thing is that I'll likely never intentionally start a triangle shawl at the wide side, again. This shawl is wider than it needed to be, as the overlap in back is more than 12" - while the length down the center back is about 6" - 12" shorter than I'd have liked, because I ran out of fleece, because of making it too wide. Ah, well. Live & learn, right? Anyway, no one who sees me wear it will know that, unless I tell them!

Beautiful!

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:Beautiful!

Thank you!! This was the project I took along to TN, for our youngest daughter's wedding, in late October, and finally finished, about a week ago, lol.

This is lovely!

Thank you so much for sharing

r ranson wrote:This is lovely!

Thank you so much for sharing

Thank you! Your Capetember thread inspired me to keep going, when I'd get frustrated with the 'art yarn' struggles, as well as inspiring me to share it.

Thank you for sharing this! The finished shawl is beautiful, and someone looking at it would never know that it wasn't exactly as you intended it. The color differences in particular are wonderful. One of the things that I love about fiber arts are that there's always more to learn - I get bored if I feel like I've mastered a skill.

Juniper Zen wrote:Thank you for sharing this! The finished shawl is beautiful, and someone looking at it would never know that it wasn't exactly as you intended it. The color differences in particular are wonderful. One of the things that I love about fiber arts are that there's always more to learn - I get bored if I feel like I've mastered a skill.

Thank you! I'm kinda that way with pretty much everything, lol. I'm doing an embroidery project, now - as a reward project to myself, for finishing the shawl. It's a little beaded pincushion (about a 2" hex, about 1.5" tall, finished) - which will go into my travel embroidery/ sewing kit. Then, I'll be building a rug felting apparatus - then felting (I hope, and assuming my apparatus build is a success) at least a few rugs, Indian namda style. While all that is going on, I'll either be hunting for a light colored, medium weight single ply wool yarn - or working on my spinning skills, to make it, myself - so I can learn a new, stretchy nålbinding stitch (York), to make some slippers, to solidify that skill, so I can use the beautiful, chocolate brown colored single ply (that I was gifted - she knows who she is - Thank you, m'lovely!), to make some lovely new nålbinded socks. While I'm doing those things, I'll also be working some more on my alpaca contract, with a core-spinning auto-wrap experiment - wish me luck! Oh, yeh. All this is stuff I'm hoping to accomplish, this winter. Ahem. I didn't know, until just a few years ago... I apparently *actually do have* ADHD.