Blanket scarf in real Shetland

 The idea for this came partly during team HSN's visit to Haworth Scouring earlier in the year. I must also give credit to Knitbug Valérie and aureliantownsend for inspiration.

The real Shetland fibre is a delight to spin, I spun some during last year's Spinzilla for my Ardelise and some more in April for my Riddari. Previously I'd spun from the end of the top (after splitting and pre-drafting) and from the fold. Here I tried making 'fauxlags', which turned out to be very quick, and spinning those unsupported longdraw with the high-speed kit on the wheel was some of the fastest spinning I've done.

The yarn was 2-ply, perhaps a little thinner than DK.

I wanted to use mostly natural colours; white, fawn and a little dark grey. With a little dyed colour. This is white shetland dyed with Ashford acid dyes; blue with a small amount of yellow for a 'peacock' blue. Not as blue as it looks in this picture.

 Before warping I sampled with some similar handspun yarn, and settled on 6 ends per inch.

On the computer I'd mocked up a more symmetrical plaid pattern, and a more random pattern, which I settled on.  I used the same sequence in the warp as for the weft, for a certain symmetry.