As part of my Mad Dash (to use 12,000 yards of yarn in 6 weeks), I decided to knit the Bandana Cowl by The Purl Bee. The original pattern called for a bulky weight with a gauge of four stitches to the inch. I did mine in laceweight. Multiple strands of laceweight.
The original yarn was part of my Wildcraft club shipment in November 2009, a BFL in the colourway Birdseed, which I blended with some oatmeal BFL and spun into a 3ply heavy laceweight.
It was spun to make a featherweight cardigan, which I did knit. Twice. The first time I knit it I soon lost a lot of weight and the cardi (which was verging on too large to begin with) was now huge on me. As it was a top down cardigan, I ripped it back to the raglan increase for the new size. I had plenty of yarn left over from the first time I knit it, so I decided to reknit the cardi with fresh, new yarn rather than the kinky yarn I had just ripped out.
Long story, short, I had a lot of kinky yarn and nothing to do with it. In fact, over 1000m of frogged yarn. Since it was a 3ply I didn’t want to use it for lace and it sat in my stash until last week when I had a cunning plan.
I washed the yarn to take out the kinks, wound two strands into a centre pull ball, then navajo-plied the double strands into another centre pull ball. Presto. 18ply bulky weight yarn.
I knit the Bandana cowl as per the pattern, though I used slightly smaller needles to give a firmer hand to the fabric. The fabric. I can’t even begin to describe the squoosh factor of an 18ply yarn made out of handspun BFL. If I were a kitten, I’d want to sleep in that cowl.
In the end, the bandana used 1075 metres of my lacweight handspun. That’s 1075 metres (1175 yards) closer to my goal of 12,000 yards. And I have a fabulous squooshy cowl to keep my next warm in the cold Danish winter winds that, until last week, was a ball of unloved leftovers that I didn’t have the heart to throw out because it was handspun.
Details:
Pattern: Bandana cowl
Fibre: Wildcraft fibre club; Oatmeal BFL overdyed in ‘Birdseed’ colourway, November 2009 combined with oatmeal BFL
Yarn: 3ply handspun heavy laceweight, multistranded
Needles: 6mm
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