designed :: Sweetgum | earthchicknits

Hello, lovelies. Let’s pretend that it hasn’t been more than two months since my last post, shall we? Let’s also pretend that I don’t have a whole backlog of projects to share. Let’s just jump right to the good stuff.

Look! I designed something!

This was designed for the 4! Ounce! Challenge! on Ravelry. The goal of the challenge was this:
“People never seem to know what to do with 4 oz! To enter the competition, you’ll have to spin, knit/weave/crochet and (optionally) publish (via ravelry and/or their blog) a one skein pattern made from 4 oz of fiber. This competition runs during August/September. The goal is to create a whole heap of new patterns designed specifically for handspun fiber. The fiber has to be handpainted fiber from Spunky Eclectic, Hello Yarn or Southern Cross Fibre to enter.”

So I spun up four ounces of Hello Yarn fiber, from the July 2010 Fiber Club:

I spun it up with a specific idea in mind. I had just finished knitting up a bulked-up version of a cowl, inspired by someone else’s project on Ravelry. (I’ll share pictures and details in another post). I decided to create my own super-sized cowl, with a fun scalloped pattern I found on Knitting on the Net.

Named for the sweetgum tree (liquidambar styraciflua) a deciduous tree native to the southeastern United States, whose leaves turns spectacular shades of yellow, red, smoky purple, and brown in the fall.

I’m pretty excited about it!

I’m offering the pattern as a free Ravelry download here. The pattern is pretty flexible, and doesn’t, of course, require handspun. Try it with Malabrigo Chunky, or maybe Manos del Uruguay. Manos is more of a heavy worsted, but you can add a 13-stitch repeat to accommodate for using a slightly lighter weight yarn. Or check out one of the handspinners on etsy for a handspun bulky thick-and-thin. Pancake and Lulu is one of my favorites, and she has pretty fall yarns in the shop right now.

Happy fall, y’all!

19 thoughts on “designed :: Sweetgum”

Beautiful!

Look how smashing you look in your Sweetgum super cowl!

And don’t feel bad about not updating. I haven’t updated since February.

I loved this – already favorite’d it on Ravelry as soon as you posted pics! 🙂

(You should think about designing something for us over at the new Ennea Collective magazine out of your handspin too…. just sayin’).

Love it! Great job!

Ooh, love it!

Hooray! I’m a pretty poor spinner, but I’m working on some lovely bright green merino right now that I think will make an awesome cowl if I can only finish it!