I'm So Magical I'm a Freaking Unicorn

A couple weeks ago I started listening to a new to me podcast, the Prairie Girls Knit and Spin, which I highly recommend - Danie and Susie are great together and I've thoroughly enjoyed the episodes I've listened to so far.  Anyway, in the first episode I caught, Danie was talking about spinning a sweater's quantity of yarn and then knitting a sweater from it.  The comment that she was so magical she was a freaking unicorn popped up and I've decided to adopt it because it is just so perfect for so very many situations that pop up in life.

Need that gearbox right now?  Here it is... I'm magical.  I'm a freaking unicorn.  You enjoyed that roast beef dinner with the impeccably puffed up Yorkshire puddings...  I'm magical.  I'm a freaking unicorn.  Spin some yarn and make something with it?  HELL YESSSSSS!  I'm most definitely a magical freaking unicorn.  See?  So perfectly fitting for so many things.

So, as you all know I started spinning in July of 2016 when my husband surprised me for my birthday with a day long private lesson with a master spinner and my choice of spinning wheel.  Over the course of time, I've spun a decent amount of yarn, but I'd not actually knit with any of it.  I wasn't sure what to knit or where to start.  Every now and again I'd take all the skeins out and admire my handy work, but that was as far as I got with them.

Then a couple of weekends ago I suddenly realized I had the perfect pattern in my queue to use up some of my early handspun.  In fact one of the yarns was my very first "on my own without an instructor sitting with me" yarn that I spun in the days after I brought my Ashford Kiwi 2 home with me.   The other yarn I spun and plied a few months later over the Christmas holidays, just before I started back to work.

The difference in the two yarns is amazing.  I can really see my progression, although both are pretty wonky.  Uneven, overspun, thin and corkscrewey in some places and underspun and thick as your thumb in others.  But they are mine, made with my own two hands and I love them.

The pattern I picked was a simple pair of fingerless gloves that I thought would be perfect for this time of year.  I had to fiddle with the pattern because my yarn definitely knit up at a much, much larger gauge than the Breton Mitts pattern called for.  I increased the needle size and then decreased my cast on considerably and adjusted the rows to fit my hands.

My mitts are thick and cozy and a bit bullet proof, the fabric is so dense, but I didn't want to go up yet another needle size from the three or four sizes I'd already gone up by, because then the thin bits got too thin.  Regardless of their wonkiness and bullet proofness, I adore these mitts and I wear them every morning while I'm waiting for the truck and more importantly the steering wheel to warm up when I'm driving to work.

And I can tell you that knitting something from yarn I made myself is pretty darn magical.  I'm a freaking unicorn.