Wholly Handspun

I’ve been honing my spinning skills this past year, ever since we brought home my great-grandmother’s spinning wheel. It was only a matter of time before I got brave enough to make something entirely from scratch.

Up until now, I’ve only used handspun as a contrast in projects with commercial yarn. I tried previously to spin and knit my own sweater last year, but that proved too ambitious. Instead, I figured I should start small. Something more forgiving, like a hat.

Struck by inspiration one day at the end of July, I drove over to the Wetaskiwin Heritage Museum for supplies. This small-town museum’s gift shop is like a local yarn store in its own right, boasting a truly impressive fibre wall with all kinds of wool in every colour under the sun.

For this project, I went against my usual colourful instincts in favour of neutral monochrome. This hat was a gift, and I figured that black would be the most versatile — even if it’s a notoriously difficult colour to knit with. The list of people I’m willing to knit in all-black for is very short.

I chose the Windschief pattern, a classic by my favourite designer Stephen West, which features twisted rib accents that would stand out nicely on handspun yarn, while also striking the balance between boring and meditative to knit compared to a plain beanie. It also came in two weights — DK and Chunky — so even if my yarn turned out thicker than anticipated, I wouldn’t have to pivot.

It’s exceedingly rare for me to gauge swatch under normal circumstances, I’m more of a “wing it” knitter, but this project required extra forethought. First, I knit up a small sample of twisted rib in a black Cascade 220 yarn I had in my stash, so I could have a visual aid for how my handspun should look upon completion.

My control swatch in hand, I began preparing for the real deal. My initial idea was to combine three fibres together: jet black and slate grey merino, and a heathered grey merino-alpaca blend. I mixed them together on my drum carder, spun up a two-ply yarn, and knit a small sample. I thought the colours would blend nicely together, but the mix muddied the stitch definition of the twisted rib. It’s true when knitters say you should either let the yarn or the pattern be the star of the show, not both.

That experiment scrapped, I opted instead to use only the black merino. Simple, but still challenging, and a sharper result.

Since I’m still learning how to control my spin, a lot of my yarn turned out “slubby,” which means it was riddled with inconsistent thickness throughout. This can be a design choice and not a sign of failure, but it took further experimentation to make something more uniform.

My next attempt, I spun directly from the long black roving and created another two-ply yarn. However, it was still very inconsistent, and still didn’t showcase the twisted rib very well. Some might generously call this “rustic,” the same way a real estate agent calls a tiny apartment “cozy.”

Researching further, I learned about the concept of letting your singles rest before plying. Spinning, especially on a wheel, imbues the yarn with a lot of kinetic energy, which can make for extremely tight or uneven plying. If you wait to ply instead of doing it right away, it can yield better results. Evie of JillianEve on YouTube has a very detailed video explaining the phenomenon.

Letting my singles sit overnight before plying made a huge difference. It wasn’t perfectly uniform still, but it was noticeably better! I could finally cast on the hat for real and put an end to the experiments.

The dark yarn turned out to be more of a blessing than a curse, blending in any unevenness in a way that looked more charming than untidy. I even texted my friend Becca this picture when I successfully transitioned from the band to the main body of the hat, with a celebratory “Hooray, it’s not ugly!”

I am glad the Windschief hat comes in chunky weight, because that’s what I ended up needing. The recipient of this hat is, in their own words, big-headed, so I knit the largest size and hoped for the best. It fit my 98th-percentile noggin just fine, so I remain optimistic!

It did look pretty good after wet-blocking, I almost kept it for myself! Almost.