Knitting with Handspun Yarn

People often ask do I knit with my own handspun yarns? The simple answer is yes, of course I do! I don't think there is anything more satisfying than knitting with handspun yarn. 

I must admit because I use a lot of my own handspun yarn for weaving my handspun knitting has been somewhat neglected. This year however I have decided to change this and start to be a bit more adventurous with my knitting. If you have seen my Instagram you will see I knit an awful lot of socks, my kids say I'm addicted to knitting socks! 

Socks are my go to project for something to curl up on the couch with or take out to the beach. I knit socks in both commercial yarns and my own handspun yarns and I have been secretly working on a few pattern ideas this month hopefully I will be able to share this soon.

In December 2022 I cast on the gorgeous Aurora Cabin Shawl by Stephen West of WestKnits using five different skeins of handspun yarn that I happened to have put to one side and sadly couldn't part with. The fibre for this yarn had come from the lovely John Arbon Textiles from their Yarnadelic range of wool tops and it is just yummy.

The shawl called for fingering weight yarn and I knew that I had spun the yarns to a fingering weight, so after doing a gauge swatch I decided to swap to a 4mm needle rather than the 3.5mm recommended as my yarn was on the heavier fingering weight / sport weight side.  I am really enjoying seeing how the colours merge and interact together and watching it grow. 

As with all handspun yarn if you do a gauge swatch first you can knit any commercial knitting pattern. If you are worried about yardage, then starting with a small project such as a hat or some fingerless gloves is a good idea. Lots of handspun yarns including my own, sometimes come in one-of-a-kind skeins but you can always combine it with a commercial mill spun yarn or purchase different colours of handspun and use them in a multi-colour project.