Dyet Yarns: reuse, recycle, reinvent!

Over the Holiday season, I made quite a few gifts. This was a stash-busting project for me, and i tried to pair up remnant yarn balls that worked well together. Some of those gifts were lace shawls. After the Shawl Wars I was part of earlier in 2010, I became enamored of the Dover Castle shawl pattern (Ravelry link). It’s a relatively simple knit for me, and the pattern sticks in my brain so I don’t have to look at the chart during every repeat. I also like the way it works out with various different color arrangements. I’ve knit this shawl in fingering yarns and worsted yarns, and both worked marvelously.

This was my first one, which you’ve seen before if you have been reading for awhile:

It’s knit with my own Dyet Yarns Shortcake, a solid superwash merino that reminds me a lot of the Wollmeise bases.

The next one was a Christmas gift. The main body is knit from Aslan Trends Invernal, and the edging is knit in some leftover fingering-weight recycled yarn from a shawl I knit for myself in a cashmere/wool blend.

I liked the fuzziness and weight of the Invernal so much I decided to make my own. I had more leftover Invernal from the bunny hat I made for a friend, so I took my brown and light pink remnants and combined them to make my Layer Cake Dover Castle. As I was knitting it up it looked delicious and made me hungry for cake.

I’m enjoying knitting lace shawls, but I am rapidly approaching maximum shawl capacity in my knits drawer/box/chair (they tend to spread). Gifts seem to be a good way to go, or maybe I will start swapping my finished shawls for more supplies. I use my shawls in many ways: shawls, scarves, hoods, face coverings… they are so versatile! The lace ones work perfectly for covering my face in the winter because they let enough air in and out to breathe easily while maintaining enough of a layer of warm air underneath to keep my face from freezing. I highly recommend them to anyone living in an area that gets cold and windy in the winter!

Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Tags: angora, diet, gifts, Knitting, lace, shawls, stashbusting, thrift