Shreds: A Self Designed Shawl, from Handspun

The fiber that started it all! That Inglenook Fibers Princess Bride yarn (on the right in the photo below) was spun for a spin-a-long on Ravelry. I used a variety of support spindles to spin my sicklebatt set. The fiber is a marvelous blend of 30% Australian Bond Fleece, merino, silk, alpaca, bamboo, faux cashmere, tencel, and silk noil. If you ever have a chance to spin anything by Inglenook Fibers, take that chance. The dyed tops, the batts, anything dyed by Inglenook Fibers is stunning. The colors, the fibers, and I've never seen anything even remotely kinda felted. 

So, once I spun the Inglenook Fibers yarn I knew that I wanted to knit something that would showcase the lovely colors. I didn't want anything that would get worn hard - I want to be able to enjoy this yarn and wear it for the rest of my life. I'm still young, so it had better last for at least 4 or 5 decades, I think! I considered a cowl, but I  just love shawls. I love wearing them, I love knitting them, I love using them as mini blankets... they're just one of my favorite things to knit. I knew that only the Inglenook Fibers yarn wouldn't make a very big shawl. I decided that I needed to spin something else to match it! I decided to spin some medium grey Romney into a neutral skein to pair it with. The Romney is stuff that I processed from a fleece that I purchased at the Black Sheep Fiber Festival in 2016, about the same time I was actually spinning the Inglenook Fibers Princess Bride sicklebatts! 

You can see sort of in the middle of the picture above, I entered the Inglenook Fibers Princess Bride yarn into my local fair! I won a special yellow ribbon and a blue ribbon for the yarn. While the yarn was sitting at the fair, I was working on spinning up the Romney. 

I cast on for the shawl in mid November, right before starting all the Christmas presents that I wanted to give to knitworthy family. Maybe a bad plan, because all I wanted to knit on was this shawl, but it worked out in the end! I used knitting the shawl as a dangling carrot so I would be motivated to knit Christmas presents... 

I started the shawl with a star/flower kind of shape, moved into a fun sunflower-esque like section, then into a frost flowers stitch pattern...

and finally into an old shale stitch pattern...

The shawl is big enough that I used most of my king sized bed to block it. I love when shawls are this large!

I'm actually still working on weaving in all the ends... there are just a few, with all the color changes that I did throughout the shawl, but I absolutely love the way that this shawl turned out! I enjoyed the challenge of fitting stitch patterns together, and making sure that I could show off the Inglenook Fibers Princess Bride yarn to the best of my ability!