So, back in November, a bunch of us got an email from Ted Myatt. He'd got thinking about all the knitters and spinners who bemoan the fact that no one ever knits or spins for *them*, and, remembering an article in the Winter 1991 issue of Spin Off magazine about a scarf exchange, he invited a bunch of us to participate in one he would organize.
I hesitated. I'm not a great spinner -- I'm pretty much an intuitive spinner, I pick up the spindle, I pick up the fibre, and what happens, happens. I generally think that there's nothing I can do that will be un-knittable, and that I'm a decent enough knitter to deal with whatever yarn I make in the end.
But it's one thing to fumble along when it's for yourself. It's another thing to be like that when it's someone else's fibre and someone else's scarf.
In the end, I decided that I'd regret it more if I didn't join in, so I did. The rules were that you sent fibre to Ted, and he would send it on to whomever would spin it/knit it for you, and sometime in June, you'd end up with a scarf. And along the way, you'd get someone else's fibre, and sometime in June, you'd send them a scarf.
Then the package of fibre arrived, and I was worried. It was lovely, an 80% wool/20% silk blend, dyed by Carol of Black Bunny Fibers. And I knew I was in trouble because it was not one colour. It was several colours, including the base white fibre, and I knew that there were things that more technically-minded spinners could do with this, but that me? I was going to be up a creek with only one intuitive paddle.
So I let it sit there for a while. Then I sampled it. And then I worried some more, and then I let it sit there for a while, until I got a gentle email from Ted just wondering how things were going.
"Great," I replied. "Slow, but I'll get there..."
Right...
And then panic set in, because I knew I had to follow through with this, so I just sat down and started spinning and started plying and started thinking about what to make with it and rejected several ideas before I decided that Véronik Avery's Lace Ribbon Scarf would probably make reasonably good use of the yarn -- what I wanted was enough stockinette stitch to show off the colours, and enough vertical lines to break up the horizontal bands of colour.
What I thought, was that maybe it would really look like a river, with all the ripples.
Okay, I know, what you want to see are the pictures.
This is a shot of the fibre I was sent, along with a hank after spinning:
This is what it looked like on the blocking board:
And this is what it looked like done:
And finally, a close-up shot:
Now, here's where there's a moment of delicious irony -- I wrote to Ted to tell him I was done, and to get the name and address of the intended victim recipient.
Turns out I was spinning and knitting for Carol herself. And if you've read Carol's blog, as I have, you'll know that she adores Véronik Avery.
It doesn't get any better than that.
And despite all the fretting and worrying, I'd do this again in a heartbeat. So, thanks, Ted, for organizing this, it was a great idea!
