There is sat in an ever growing pile --- the zillions of yarn samples I had collected over time. They often were of fibers I could never afford to buy in bulk except at very special occasions.... A tuft of quivit...a tiny pile of silk noils... a little ramie all tagged and priced in one of the fiber bags sitting in the cupboard. What ever would I do with all this?? I could never bear to throw it out. Then finally one day inspiration struck. I would use them all for a project.
I decided to make a very relaxed TV watching spare time project out of these little wonderful bits of fluff most less than an ounce in size. I set the samples in my workbasket by the couch and started to spin them up a bit at a time. I used a medium-sized drop spindle and spun a thickness of around that of baby fingering yarn. After a bit I had a nice basket full of little balls of fingering weight yarn. I looked at it for several days awaiting a second attack of inspiration.
I looked at a number of weaving and knitting projects and found that most would require too much yarn. At last, by chance I saw a pattern for a nice crop top sleeveless sweater. I decided that I would do an abstract pattern using the various fibers and make good use of the multi-hued effect. I set the various colored balls on the kitchen table and roughed out a color pattern that looked good to me. I decided to start with the front rather than the back so my beautiful abstract would certainly fill the front of my little sweater. If I had to fill in the back with some larger amount of handspun, it could go on the back. This proved to be a good idea.
I cast on 60 stitches with size six needles (American) and did six rows of single rib (knit one, purl one). I knit a couple of easy rows in one color and then started to work the various colors in by using a technique with a very scary name --- instarsia. All this means is that rather than carrying the new color in back of that being worked on, one over laps the new color and works solely with it. I kept it simple never working more then three different colors on a row and slowly built irregular looking patches of color to resemble the way hues in a sunset merge into one another.
Working in this manner, I knitted a length of 11 inches,
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