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| Llama/wool/silk/angeline Roving |
LLAMA/SILK 'SEED SCARF'
This scarf is made with a 2-ply sportweight yarn that I recently finished.
I started with some roving that was a gift from Nanci Sutton of La Llama Wear.
It was a little over 2 ounces of a beautiful llama/wool blend that she had done, and she had added in some silk leftovers
and some angeline (shiny stuff!). It was labeled "Grapeseed Greta", and as you can see, it looked really interesting.
I started out trying to spin the roving as it was, but I was having trouble
blending it as I spun it. So I put it through a fine-mesh Pat Green carder and it came out like this:
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| Roving ready to spin... |
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| Single ply yarn on the bobbin |
Then it came time to spin it all up. I tried
to blend the silk in fairly regularly with the llama/wool so that the finished yarn would be more consistent when finished
and subsequently knit.
Here is what the single ply looked like as I was spinning it. You can see
the bits of silk and the angeline shining on the brown background.
So now it was time to decide what to ply it with.
Should I ply it on itself, or should I ply it with another single so that the colors of the silk and the angeline will stand
out?
I opted for the later since I had a single ply already
spun up which was a very similar color to the llama/wool in the first single. I thought that would really bring out
the silk bits of color, plus it would stretch whatever I had into enough yarn to make a scarf.
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| Finished yarn |
The second single is 100% llama fiber which comes
from one of my offspring, Prince of Thieves. He is now owned by Karen Freund, but she was gracious enough to give
me his yearling fleece. Prince is out of my best fibered female, Joy Noel, who has incredibly fine and soft fleece -
all of her offspring have had fleece that has tested either 20 or 22 microns. Prince's sire is my current herd sire,
Chilean Outlaw, who has a super high luster fleece.
Prince's fiber came out just as luscious as I knew it would - reddish brown (bay)
in color, super fine, low amount of guard hair and with a super high luster to it. I knew that the single from Prince
would be a wonderful addition to my finished yarn.
I washed and set the yarn, barely allowed it to finish drying, and got to work
on trying out the seed stitch for a scarf. I decided on 33 stitches wide, making the number an odd number so that the
edges would always be knit.
The seed stitch pattern is: knit 1, purl 1, knit 1, purl 1, etc. I recommend
casting on an uneven number of stitches so that you are always beginning the row with a knit and finishing with a knit.
This gives a very neat edging to the piece. So Row 2 is also knit 1, purl 1, knit 1, purl 1, etc. You are basically
alternating knits and purls in one row and knitting into your purls, purling into your knits for the entire piece. It's
very easy and knits up quickly.
This is what the pattern looks like:
(click to see close-up of pattern)
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| Llama/Silk Seed Scarf |
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