October is for Spinners KAL

There is a knit-a-long started on Ravelry that I wanted to share with you. My very talented friend Sharon (aka Idyllicchick) is one of the owners of Hanks Yarn & Fiber in Gainesville, FL. Aside from being a talented knitter, spinner and LYS owner, she is also one of the nicest people I've ever met. And now it turns out, she is an amazing pattern designer as well. Who knew?!?! :)

I fell in love with this pattern when she wrote it last fall and the KAL starting on Ravelry reminded me that I wanted to blog about it. Check out the pattern October is for Spinners. It's a free pattern from Hanks Yarn & Fiber year of free scarf patterns. And while you're at it, check out all the patterns from 2008: A Year in Scarves. Lorena wrote some beautiful patterns as well. I see at least two I plan to make for gifts this year. Very talented LYS owners indeed! This year they are doing afghan squares. You can see them here 2009: The Year of the Afghan.

There is a blog post about the October is for Spinners scarf here on the Hanks blog. Believe it or not, this amazing pattern is Sharon's first published knitting pattern! The pattern starts out with a spider and ends with a web. It is knit with 4 strands of lace weight held together and you gradually drop a strand as you go so you end using only one strand for the web. So creative!


(photo borrowed from the Hanks blog)

I'm going to knit this up myself as soon as I finish my S'mores Revontuli Shawl. I dress like a witch at halloween every year and I think this scarf would make a fantastic addition to my costume. I'm thinking of dyeing up some pencil roving in a progressive dye so I can spin yarn resulting in a scarf that starts out with an orange spider and ends with a black web. Or should it be a black spider and an orange web? Or how about black to purple? Black to gray to purple? Hmmm ... so many ideas floating around for this! What do you think?