Now is the time when knitbloggers look back and reflect on the finished objects of last year. Here’s a mosaic of it all:

Twenty four things: half of them socks, 10 accessories, the Squares for Sharron blanket, and poor Phyllo Yoked Pullover, which turned out very unflattering, sigh. You can click on the photo for details on all of the projects.

A bit more interesting is the yarns of 2008. Specifically, handspun. I bought a used, somewhat rickety (well-loved, right?) Ashford Traveller at the end of 2007 and gave it quite the workout in ‘08:

clicky for linky!

That’s a lot of yarn! Looking at the mosaic, I can clearly see how I improved as the year progressed, from the overspun messes in spring to the relatively good quality yarns that I spun in the winter. In mid fall I decided that my fiber stash had gotten out of control, so I spun the last ten skeins in a relatively short span of time.

While I was getting good at spinning yarn, I wasn’t very good at using it. No, not at all. Had I actually knit with the early yarns I would have realized how icky and overspun they were and I probably could have spun better stuff sooner. Ah, well, hindsight and all. Regardless, I have a shelf of handspun sitting around, becoming yet another stash. I finally decided to do something about it, all at once!

If you read Lolly’s blog, then you’ve seen her posts about the Komb blanket she’s knitting. I have an unnatural love of hexagons and how they tessellate oh-so-perfectly, so Komb is perfect! I decided that all of the handspun, from crap to gold, was going to become a gigantic blanket. Knit it until it’s gone!

First came color selection:

Since my color preferences are pretty consistent (cool colors!), this was pretty easy! I omitted anything with brown so that the blanket could hang out on our grey couch. I also chose yarns that were relatively the same weight – dk to worsted. One bulky yarn made it in to the blanket, and my next post will talk about the issues with handling the gauge difference.

I knit a few swatches:

Which became a little flower:

Which then multiplied!

The cream border yarn is Knitpicks Bare Superwash in the worsted weight. I went back and forth (and back. and forth.) of whether to use the superwash or non-superwash versions. There’s quite a bit of a price difference between them, but I finally splurged for the superwash (after buying all that fiber, what’s a few more dollars a skein?) so that I could easily spot clean the border without accidentally felting the yarn.

In the past, I never considered myself much of a blanket knitter. I’ve knit one baby blanket, the Oat Couture Prairie Blanket, and at the time I thought that was the longest, most painful project ever. I’m really enjoying this blanket, though – I think the handspun makes everything much more fun! I have a huge bag that I keep all the yarns in and it’s entertaining to close my eyes, put my hand in, and pull out the next color. I’ve also been searching the internets looking for more! colors! and spinning additional skeins to add to the blanket.

Since I’ll be working on this blanket for the foreseeable future, I’m going to spread out the details until the blanket is done. Next up: construction and gauge, where I spill the beans on the fact that I’m not actually knitting Komb at all, just a very close replica.