All New Homespun Handknit from Amy Clarke Moore

Homespun yarn has it’s own character. The textures, colors, and blends all combine to create something unique. No two yarns are alike. Their textures are unmatched.

Amy Clarke Moore, Editor of Spin-Off Magazine brings us this book, with 25 small (most use only a few hundred yards of handspun) projects to be knit with your own (or if you’re lucky enough to be the recipient of) homespun yarn. While not a spinning technique book, it’s chock full of 25 patterns like hats, shawls, jackets, scarves, soakers, bags, mitts, and my favorite, an Andean Alpaca Poncho for your favorite youngster. The yarn is unique, the projects are unique. Each project includes the information needed to create the best yarn for the project, or to even substitute the right commercial yarn.

All New Handspun Handknit discusses spinning a wide variety of fibers with a certain project in mind and knitting with handspun. In addition to basic yarn information (yards per pound, gauge, wraps per inch), each project includes details on the techniques used to create each yarn.

There’s a lot to like about the Eloise Bandana from Katryn Seeburger. This cute little colorwork triangle can be worked as a bandana or kerchief size or a bigger shawlette.

It’s worked in two colors of fingering weight yarn so you can use whatever yarn you have in your stash and just make it as big as you can (since it is worked from the bottom up).

You can see the two sizes from the photo, and also two colorwork options: strawberries and lily of the valley.

But that’s not all the choices you have. In fact, there are 34 different charts you can choose from to knit onto your project. Some of the options include happy faces, a lobster, a pumpkin, a snail and a butterfly. There are cherries, peaches, tomatoes and radishes.

There’s even a blank square you can use to draw your own little design if you want to use something else. Or keep it blank and make it a plain checkerboard design.

And while both of these shawls use the same icons throughout, you could also use different designs throughout if you want. Say a fall version with a bat, pumpkin, leaf and acorn, or a summer beach theme with sailboat, fish, lobster and a bird? I keep suggesting four different icons because the larger size has four rows of squares, but the smaller has three, so you could do stripes of the same icon or alternate a couple of different ones, whatever you like.

Look through the finished projects on the Ravelry project page to see lots of different options, from rows to individual icons. There are also some projects that are smaller than the suggested size to make a smaller bandana. You could also keep going a make a bigger shawl working increases in the same way as you have been going.

Check out all the details and grab a copy of the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Katryn Seeburger]

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