Happy Easter and Happy Spring (only slightly belated). I hope everyone had a nice long weekend. We enjoyed having lots of free time and a couple of family dinners. I spent Sunday working on the above - pretty, springy lime green superwash wool. It will become sock yarn.(The observant among you will notice that green roving did not feature anywhere in my "in progress" to-do list - I chose to ignore it for Sunday.) This stuff is lovely to spin. Not much pre-drafting required, I just tore the roving into strips and added twist. I was finished nearly half of it before I realized. I can't wait to get some more. The colour is great and not as flat as it looks at first- it's actually a few different very close shades all blended together.

Stuff in progress.

Here is my finished hat yarn. I spun the second braid of wool a little more evenly but about the same overall size (so basically with fewer big slubs) than the first skein. I wanted to make sure I'd actually have enough yarn to make my hat. It measured in at forty metres.

I started knitting my hat after dinner on Friday. The biggest double pointed needless I had around were 6.00 mm (from the cat bed) so I cast on 5 stitches and worked from the top down. After a few increase rounds I was able to measure my gauge and figured out a target number for the circumference of my hat. I kept trying it on to make sure I was getting something that would actually go on my head. Sorry for the strange colour - we had to conserve power last night (it's so cold the power corp's equiment is failing) so I couldn't turn on a lot of lights.


Once I felt my hat was long enough I measured around my head and decided where the ear flaps (essential for a cold weather hat) ought to go and how wide they should be. I cast off in the front and back and knitted the ear flaps down from the hat. I like to be able to tie my ear flaps down in windy weather so these have braids (and tassels) on the ends of them to tie under my chin.

My gauge was pretty dense (about 5 stitches over two inches) so my hat is not very stretchy but keeps the wind out nicely. I love the colour I ended up with. I had no idea how this would turn out when I was pouring stuff into that casserole dish.