Pattern: The Official Kittyville Hat from  Stitch ‘n Bitch
Yarn: Mission Falls 1824 Wool in #005 Raven.  I used about 2.5 skeins.
Needles: 4.5 mm bamboo 16” circular and DPNs
Modifications: None

Ta da!

My first piece of wearable knitting that actually fits.  This hat was actually finished a few weeks ago but we had to wait for it to be sunny on a day when we were home before I could get some pictures.

I’m extremely proud of this hat.  I learned several new skills while making it (i-cord, seed stitch, picking up stitches and making pompoms) and it has added greatly to my confidence as a knitter.

The pompoms were especially fun to make. I started off using the cardboard doughnut method which was taking a  really really really long time and was correspondingly boring. Deciding that I must be doing something wrong or at least that there must be an easier way of doing this I did a little internet research and found this tutorial from Bella Dia about making pompoms. The finger method is so quick and easy and the pompoms look great.  I used 100 turns around all four fingers and did a minimum of trimming so that my pompoms are quite full and a little rough looking.

 

 

Pattern: Hot Head from Stitch ‘n Bitch
Yarn: Brown Sheep Company Lamb’s Pride Bulky in #M05 Onyx, #M110 Orange you Glad, #M155 Lemon Drop and #M180 Ruby Red.
Needles: Size 10 (6 mm) aluminum needles
Modifications: None

This took me an absurd amount of time to start but only a couple of hours to actually knit up and finish. Starting was delayed because I wanted to use the colours called for in the pattern (which meant calling yarn shops until I found someone who had them and then waiting for the yarn to come in the mail) and I needed to find a pair of needles the right size. The pattern calls for 6.5 mm needles, which I have in lovely bamboo, but this turned out to be too big for me when I made up the swatch so I ended up borrowing a pair from Jane.

Once I got started the hat went really quickly. I think it would probably be even faster in the round since you wouldn’t have to worry about sewing the seem.

There is a fair amount of each skein left and Rob suggested it might make a good neck warmer. I’ll have to wait until I get some 6 mm circulars or at least some needles longer than 9” though; the 64 stitches for the hat only just made it onto the needles I used.

I’m very pleased with this hat. The firey colours make it seem warm just to look at.

 

 

 

As this was something totally new I decided to do a bunch of reading before I actually tried to use the spindle. I looked up stuff on the internet and printed off the material recommended by Erin. I checked out the library and borrowed The Complete Spinning Book by Candace Crockett. I read through everything two or three times and checked out anything that didn’t line up (and learned a bit of extraneous stuff about raising sheep and the production of silk).

It turns out that spinning is one of those things that is terribly difficult to explain in type but really pretty easy to do - at a basic level.


The spindle Erin lent me is a Turkish spindle. The cross pieces fit together and slide over the top of the spindle until they stop on a thick part a little way from the bottom. This means that you can wind your yarn around the cross pieces as you are working and when you’re done you pull them out and you a have a centre-pull ball. Pretty nifty! I didn’t actually figure out how to do this but I didn’t have all that much yarn either so it didn’t really matter. I wound my yarn into a small skien when I needed to take it off the spindle and “set the twist” (got it wet and let it dry while hanging over a door knob).

The roving Erin lent me with the spindle was a wool-mohair blend which she said had a longer staple and would be easier to work with. It was a nice chocolate brown colour and turned into a lovely squashy thick yarn.


One of the things I found really neat about this was just how strong the yarn was once I made it. For all that my yarn is full of thick slubs and skinny bits I could still tug pretty hard without feeling any of the fibers move. It’s also a pretty relaxing thing to do. You stand and spin the spindle and feed the fibers into the twist as it climbs up the newly created yarn. I couldn’t manage to feed fiber and keep the spindle turning the right direction so most of the time I stopped it with my leg to prevent my yarn from unspinning as I was working. It’s really exciting to see the yarn grow - it doesn’t take long before the tip of your spindle touches the floor and you have to wind the yarn you’ve just made onto the spindle body and start again.

A warning though - everyone says this is addicting - believe them!

I finished spinning the roving and got it all wet and hung it over the faucet (to be moved to the door knob later) and just had to find something else to spin. It’s too neat - turning fluffyness into yarn. Then I remembered an article I’d read on Knitty while I was searching for spinning instructions. It was about spinning silk hankies (not the kind you wipe your nose with) and I had a couple of silk hankies. They were left over from Erin’s felting class the week before when we’d been allowed to take home some fancy extras to spice up our felting.

These are even more fun than the wool. You stretch out the fibers and set up the spindle and then just go. Joining the two lengths was easy too. It was amazing to watch the twist climb up the fluffy silk fiber and make this shimmery thread.


I decided to try plying my two yarns together just to see how it would go and what it would look like. I didn’t really have any specific instructions for plying except that I needed to turn the spindle opposite the direction I was turning it when I was spinning. My lack of further instruction could most easily be attributed to the fact that I was really excited about making the plied yarn and didn’t want to loose any time looking for instructions on how to do it.

There was only enough of the pink silk thread to ply with about a third of my wool yarn but I liked the way they looked when they twisted together.


I wanted to make something from my new yarns but I knew that it wasn’t going to be very big. I settled on a pattern from the current article of Knitty knowing I was going to have to make some alterations.

I began by weighing both yarns and marking the approximate middle point on each. I decided to use the plied yarn for the cast-on and bind-off edges with the plain brown for the rest. I cast on 56 stitches with 6.5 mm bamboo needles. This took me to just before my centre point marker on the plied yarn. I worked the pattern with the brown yarn following the instructions for the short rows (though I‘m not sure if I did the slipped stitches correctly) until I was close to my centre marker and then started to increase the rows again. As it turned out my centre marker was a bit off and I am short one row on one side of my head scarf. I just ignored the missing row and bound off my piece.

I finished it off by weaving in the tails and sewing on a button - I found a perfect little pink flower in my button box. It fits around my head quite well and I think will do a good job of keeping my ears warm on cool fall and spring days.