Let’s turn that frown upside down

After my “too bad, so sad” post a couple of days ago, it’s time for a picker upper. Meet my Handspun Clockwork:It looks like a big smile, doesn’t it?

It was such a joy to knit this. I bought the gradient roving from Fiber Optic at MDSW’12 and the purplish top from Into the Whirled at Rhinebeck’12, and I finished the spinning just after the winter holidays. I intended to use these to make Stephen West’s Spectra, but the amounts weren’t right.I decided to go with another Stephen West design instead (Clockwork), but still had to modify the pattern a little bit. The pattern calls for 420 yards of color A (the purple) - I had 372. It calls for 275 yards of color B (the gradient) - I had 267. I wanted to use as much of my gradient handspun as possible, so where the pattern says to “repeat last 4 rows 10 more times” I only repeated 8 times. My finished shawl has 32 fewer stitches/row at the end, but is plenty long!

Remainders: I have 16 grams of the purple solid (about 51 yards) and 12 grams of the gradient (about 28 yards). My modification worked out very well in this case.

I tried wearing it bandit-style (pointy part down, in the front) but I don’t look very threatening:

Just look at all that nubbly, squishy garter stitch. Yum!