This is a photo of Bandon Beach, OR:

And these are some of the goodies that Rayna and I pulled from a friends de-stash last spring. 4 identical batts (a little over 100g each) by an Etsy shop called Zauberzeug (45% Merino, 30%Silk, 20% nylon, 5% firestar). Here is the link to their original post. They don’t have a lot up there right now, but trolling through their past sales I found a batt called ‘Mint Chocolate’–if they ever make those again I definitely want one!

This was my first time spinning from a batt, and also my first gradient skein. I started by pulling off strips, one from each batt, and working my way down each one, a colour band at a time. I definitely had an adjustment period, at first I hated spinning from a batt but it got smoother as I went along.

When it was done I had 3 bobbins of singles, each one in the right sequence so that when I plied them back I would recreate the gradient. I feel like the bobbins look progressively better, top to bottom, as I got used to spinning from a batt.

My clumsy navajo plying (really need to practice that!).

My finished yarn, all wound up! 288 yards of a wildly inconsistent yarn, ranging from worsted to sport.

After much angst and Ravelry-searching, I settled on a pattern called the ‘Quaker stretch’ which is intended to be forgiving of inconsistent handspun, and also helps max our your yardage because the pattern calls for large needles and is designed to let you knit until you run out of yarn.

The pattern shows off the gradient beautifully!

A mindless, easy knit, mostly accomplished in the car on the way to NYC over the Labour Day weekend, I would definitely make another one. Ravelry project page here.