A long drawn out process of tossing my stash resulted in the idea to knit this blanket using the handspun (including leftovers from sweaters). As a matter of fact, as of the day this blanket started, a good portion of my stash is still “tossing” in the spare room, waiting for me to decide what to do.
I cast on 225 stitches using a US 10 needle and based on my quick swatching that will give me a 48-50 inch wide blanket. Marsha’s blankets have both turned out wider than the gauge indicated because of the garter stretch when the blanket is bigger and heavier than a swatch. So I think this will be good.
Base color is natural white wool. Oxford and Columbia from Summer Spin-In projects the last couple years. I doubt that I have quite the yardage I’ll need for that, but there is more fleece! I’ll just card and spin more as I need it. (Maybe a bad idea, but I just wanted to get started!)
A couple of the colors will need to be overdyed so I don’t have so much of any one color. Again, that will be done as I go.
The oldest yarn to go into this project are a couple skeins of what I called “meat sheep” when I spun it. Suffolk cross more than likely. And I also have a skein of Charlotte’s fleece with mohair locks carded in.
Other skeins currently in the bag are CVM leftovers from my recently finished Dark Green Forest, a skein of Corriedale/silk, and I may dig the Funky Grandpa leftovers out of the Mother Bear kit and use them in here, too. They really are a bit too thin for Mother Bear gauge. We’ll see…
01-18-2022
Yarn Combo #1: Charlotte carded with green mohair locks and white Columbia (243 yds/60 grams)
01-20-2022
Gray Charlotte left over from the Funky Grandpa sweater. It’s a short section (4 garter ridges) because there was only a small ball left.
Started second skein of Columbia (~190 yards, 47 grams) about the same time that I started a skein from the 40 lbs of meat sheep fleece from the early 2000s. Dyed various blues.
01-21-2022
Started 3rd skein of Columbia (~189 yards, 46 g) at about the same time that I started a small ball of purple Babydoll Southdown leftover from a pair of handspun socks.
01-23-2022
After the purple I added in a leftover ball of terra cotta from the CVM sweater (Dark Green Forest pattern). I finished the Columbia skein and started an Oxford skein (168 yds). After the terra cotta CVM I added in a skein of purple and green Bob (Romney?) from one of my earliest fleeces. This is the same yarn that I used for the vest I have that I wove in pieces on a board. Basically a large pin loom for both fronts and a new pin loom for the back piece.
Once I finished the ball of purple and green I moved on to blue green BFL that I spun to make socks for a couple who lived next door and were friends. I added in the second Oxford skein (157 yards) and started with another dark blue-green overdyed on Charlotte. This is another leftover ball from the Funky Grandpa sweater.
01-26-2022
After the dark blue green I switched to some gold yarn that dyed (I think with something from the yard) in the fleece form and then spun. This was more of the fleece from Bob (Romney?) that I got back in the late 90s. After a few ridges of gold I ran out of the natural and started a new skein of natural Oxford (121 yards). There is only one small skein left after this so there will be some spinning needed if I’m going to keep obsessing about this blanket! 
01-29-2022
After about 11 ridges of the gold Bob (there’s still more of this yarn to use later) I used a small ball of multicolored gold/green/orange Bob. When that ran out I started on a skein of the blue/gray variegated meat sheep yarn. Meanwhile I finished the natural and started the last skein of Oxford (102 yards). This last batch includes my 2 ply sample spliced to my original 3-ply sample that I thought was plied too tightly. The blanket doesn’t care! 
Once I run out of this white I will need to start spinning. I currently have about 36 inches of length on the blanket and I think my goal is about 60-68 inches.
02-16-2022
Completed a new skein of Oxford (~180 yards) and combined it with forest green Charlotte. Then moved on to more purple and green Bob. Started another skein of Oxford (~200 yards) and am knitting this with some magenta Charlotte (one of my fav colors in the Funky Grandpa and the Indigo Frost) for a couple ridges and then moved on to the rest of the turquoise meat sheep (Suffolk?) that I used earlier in the blanket.
02-27-2022
After the turquoise meat sheep I am using the only ball of yarn that I didn’t dye. It’s almost an undyed pale gray with an overwash of light blue in places. I think it is a merino silk from a small braid from when Verb and Tactile (now Sincere Sheep, I think) were vending together at Stitches. Early 2000s?
The Oxford ran out halfway through the ball of yarn so now I have to spin more and probably card more, too.
So far it looks like I have used about 3100 yards of handspun in this blanket.
05-05-2022
I spun about 250 yards of Oxford so that I could knit on the blanket during NoCKRs retreat. That gave me about 8-10 inches and then I needed to spin more. I spun another skein of about 325 yards and used probably 200 yards of it. Bound off last night with the same gray wool and green mohair blend that I started with.
I used all of the yarn that I had from Bob. There was yellow, yellow/green, green/purple and a purple. I spun all the rest of the Charlotte--gray, green, blue green and magenta. I also used all of the meat sheep handspun in my stash. It was blue variegated and a turquoise variegated. Those three make up the bulk of the blanket, but there are others. The only handspun of this weight that I didn’t use up completely is the CVM that is undid and the CVM that was overdyed terra cotta for my last sweater.
Overall yardage estimate: 4,000 yards of handspun.
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