Another Sockhead Hat

You know how much I adore Countess Ablaze yarns, so when this gem of a skein arrived, I itched to knit something with it.  Isn't it pretty?

This is my favourite base of yarn, Countcashmerino High Twist, which is a Fingering/4 ply weight yarn and made up of 80% Merino, 10% Nylon, 10% Cashmere and is 400 yds/365m, weighing 100g.  It is soft and bouncy and feels tremendously decadent when I knit with it, and when I wear it.  I wanted to knit something that would show off this gorgeous yarn and not hide it.  I wanted this yarn front and centre when I wore it because I couldn't countenance the glorious colours being muted by a contrasting yarn.  I have rather a lot of shawls (as you might have guessed if you have read this blog before) and I knew it shouldn't be put on my feet, so that only left a small selection of accessories.  I knew putting it on my hands would be wonderful, but it might cause the yarn to pill before it's time if it was put on my hands.  I seem to be on a bit of a hat kick at the moment, so I decided what I needed, was of course, another hat!  I even had the pattern in mind, the Sockhead Hat, which I have knit recently and wear all the time.

I knit this hat in 24 hours.  I couldn't stop myself, because the little pops of colour drew me on as I knit it. This hat grew quite a bit in the blocking.  This is the fabric before soaking.

You can see how defined the stitches are in the above photo.  It actually made the fabric quite bumpy.  I soaked the hat and left it to lay flat, without pinning, as it dried, until it was just slightly damp.  At this point I stretched the crown over my polystyrene head to dry completely to get a nice rounded top.  The rest of the hat was not stretched at all at this stage.

This is the fabric after blocking:

You can see how much smoother the stitches are.  It made the fabric supple and soft.  It was quite a transformation.  Because the hat grew in blocking, this hat is much slouchier than the last one I knit, so I usually wear it with the brim folded back.

Folding back the brim, not only shortens the slouch, but also makes your ears much warmer.  I wear this hat such a lot at the moment.  It is getting a bit chillier in the UK, and this hat is the perfect way of keeping my ears and the back of my neck warm.  One thing about shorter hair is you get a colder neck in Winter!

As you can see in the above photo, this hat does hug the nape of the neck nicely, so there is no gap between the hat and scarf.

I love wearing this hat.  It is soft and decadent but it is also fun and cheerful.  It goes with a surprising amount of neck accessories, because there are so many flashes of colour in the finished hat.  I thought it would be hard to match it up with anything, whereas it actually seems to go with everything.  I really don't think this will be the last time I knit this hat or buy this yarn, but if I were to pair the two together again, I would knit the stocking stitch portion a little shorter to take into account the growth in blocking.

So, in conclusion, I love this hat and I love this yarn.  Try them both!

A Finished Peacock Skein

As you might guess from the title of this post, I have another finished skein of handspun yarn to talk about today.  The skein in question is the second one I've spun on my IST Tibetan Spindle.  During the course of spinning this skein I fell a bit more in love with spindle spinning.  I started to get a bit faster and even, and I'm starting to get my conscious effort out of the way of muscle memory.  It feels like it has taken forever to build up muscle memory for spindle spinning, but I know it's no time at all really.

With this second skein I thought I'd try doing a straight forward 3-ply construction.  I divided my braid into 3 using my Digital Pocket Scale (oh I love this little gadget!) and set to spinning straight away.  The braid in question was from Hilltop Cloud, and called Peacock, which was a blend made up of 50% Merino, 38% Shetland and 12% Llama.

Photo from www.hilltopcloud.co.uk

With the success of the last skein I spun from a Hilltop Cloud blend I was interested to see how the support spindle would change the nature of the finished yarn.  This carded blend of fibre was stunning to spin.  This blend was soft and light and without any kind of lumps and bumps that might interrupt the glory of spindle spinning this luscious fibre.

The only problem with this spindle is that it spins very fast.  I'm not quite fast enough as a spinner yet to keep up with the speed of the spindle.  This means that the fibre is very tightly spun.  As an inexperienced spinner I decided to make my life easier and simply get a slower and heavier spindle to help me ply more slowly than I was spinning the singles.  I hit paydirt when I found another shop in the UK that sells support spindles.  They are totally different from the gorgeous hand-carved Tibetan spindle I already own and I was delighted that I found somewhere slightly cheaper than IST Crafts to try a different kind of support spindle.  The shop in question is Wildcraft and it makes resin spindles, both drop and supported styles.  The shaft of the support spindles are made from carbon fibre, which is a flexible and strong material, and the resin has plants and flowers embedded in it.

This lovely Medium Weight Support Spindle has rush flowers embedded in it.  The spindle comes incredibly well wrapped in sturdy tube, which I'm using for storage and  with a 20g bundle of "mystery fibre".  This spindle cost £25, and it was worth every penny.  I started playing with the mystery fibre straight away and loved how well it spun.  Immediately, I knew that this heavier spindle (26g) would ply fibres spun on the IST Crafts spindle perfectly.  It was only after plying the yarn that I realised that this spindle is, in fact, a couple of grams lighter than the IST Crafts spindle.  It feels heavier and slower because the tip of the shaft is not as tapered.  The thicker shaft slows down the speed that can be created by rolling the larger surface area through one flick between finger and thumb.  It's a simple rule of physics that I didn't consider, but it achieves the same end.  The spindle from Wildcraft, is slower, which allows me to ply more easily.

The resulting yarn from spinning on the IST Crafts spindle and plying on the Wildcraft Medium Weight spindle is still tightly spun and plied.

As a result the yarn is very dense and smooth, unlike the yarn spun on the rakestraw spindle, which is more lofty because fewer twists are applied while drafting because it is a much more manual process.  The yarn is fingering/4ply weight and has only 115m/126yds in length because of it's density.  To determine the weight of the yarn I used an app, iSpin Toolkit.  One of the other things this app can tell you is the twist angle of the plied yarn.  I have no idea what it means, but hopefully one day I will understand how knowing that the angle of twist is 25° is useful!  I do like this yarn, but I have no idea what I could make out of it, possibly some mitts or a hat, as there is so little of it, for such a fine gauge of yarn.

I want to try spinning a blend from Hilltop Cloud again, on the slower spindle and see if I can get a similar gauge of yarn, with much less density.  I have decided that I really like the look of a 3ply yarn construction. It is much more even than a 2ply yarn and it has a nice roundness to it that I like.  I am so in love with spinning on support spindles, I know I'm hooked for good.  I can't wait to get to the stage when I know how to create the yarn I want and then spin with a specific yarn in mind.  I know it's going to take lots of practice to get there, but at least I am happy with what I am producing now, and the speed at which I can do it, it vastly reduced by using a support spindle over using the rakestraw.  I'm afraid that little spinning tool has been largely abandoned of late.  Maybe I should pick it up again and do a big lofty skein of yarn as a contrast to all these tightly spun yarns.

Test Knitting Determination

Over the last month I did a bit of test knitting for my friend Elly of Elly's Knit Insanity.  Elly has a video podcast in the UK and she also has health issues, so we are able to understand each other a little better than most.  Elly asked me to test knit one of the series of patterns she has been working on and I was delighted to be able to help.

The pattern is a cabled hat and it is called Determination.  I started out doing the pattern in Rowan DK and was only able to get a couple of rubbish snaps on my camera phone before passing it on to my Dad who does like the hats I make him.  I liked the pattern so much I decided to make another one and keep it for myself this time.  I was able to use some of my handspun yarn, which was a treat, as I've not used much of it, so far.

The yarn I used, was spun from a Hilltop Cloud blend called Mallard.  I spun the fibre in the Tour de Fleece this Summer and I really like how bouncy and soft it is.  It is a DK weight and I had more than enough yardage  for the project, as I had a total of 184m. The fibre is 62% merino/25% BFL/13% baby alpaca which makes for an interesting texture and the bounce seemed perfect for cables.

I used the alternating cast on, described by Liz Corke, which gives a nice elastic edge and is simple to do and has become my preferred method of performing a ribbed cast on.

The cable chart is nice and straight forward without being boring and I whizzed through the hat in no time flat. It was lovely knitting with this handspun yarn and I love how the blended fibres transform the resulting knitted fabric into something multidimensional, rather than a flat solid colour produced by block dyed fibre or yarn.

I used 3.75mm needles to get a fabric I liked, as I have a loose gauge, and did three repeats of the chart. The resulting hat is quite a nice fit on my 21.5" head, as it is not tight, but will not fly off either.  I decided that as I had lots of yarn left over from the knitting of my hat, I would use the remainder to make a pom pom.

I used a Clover Pom-Pom Maker and it took less than 10 minutes to make this very plump and beautiful pom pom.  I love this clever little gadget and have several sizes.  As soon as I had sewn on the trimmed pom pom, I knew it had been the right thing to do.  This lovely fat pom pom sets off the rest of the hat beautifully.

The pattern is available for immediate purchase and download, on Ravelry for £2.50.  It's a lovely hat, which I enjoyed knitting, and love wearing.  I may well knit up another one is a bolder colour next time, but I still love how the handspun yarn looks and think that the pattern shows it off excellently.  I really must find some more patterns to show off my growing pile of handspun yarn! Does anyone have any suggestions?

Stitched Together Crafting Library KAL Prize Draw

Well, it's over!  The deadline for entry into the Crafting Library KAL has been passed and the threads are closed.  There have been some amazing entries into the KAL and I have loved taking part in all the chat over on the Ravelry board.  Thank you everyone who joined in, it's been great getting to know you a bit better.

In the end there were 24 people who entered three different photographs of progress in the Progress Thread.  From those 24 people there were 15 people who gained an extra entry into the prize draw, so in total there were 39 entries to draw from.  I used random.org to draw the winners from number 1 to 39, and the prizes were awarded in the order they were released on the blog.

So, as you can see from my screen prints of the winners, these people win the following prizes:

Laalbear Aran - Tara
Manos de Urugua Fino - emma1969
Stitch Markers and Cards - PatternWhisperer
Foreverknitting31 donated HomemadeSunshine11 Boot Toppers - Ilovemyipad
Araucania Ranco Multy from Madmum - chevyrell
Lara Smoot Pattern & Shalimar Yarns Zoe Sock - CraftyNadine
Fondant Fibre Bag & Choice of Fibre or Handspun Yarn - NulaBoola.

I really hope that those of you that didn't complete your projects, are motivated to keep going and get them finished soon. I certainly plan on finishing my cardigan in the near future.  I also hope that you are all motivated to look more often at your crafting library, I know I am.

So, if you are a winner, I will PM you on Ravelry and let you know that you are a winner and either ask for your address, or I'll pass your details on to the person sending your prize out.

Thank you all for jumping into the KAL so whole heartedly, it's been fun and I hope to run another one in the New Year.

Polar Cape

Do you remember, a while ago I received a bag of yarn from my Mum's friend?  I have felt sad for a while that I haven't completed anything from this gift and recently I was in the need of comfort knitting, so I dug out the bag.

In the bag was nearly 6 skeins of Rowan Polar, which is now discontinued.  It is a super bulky weight yarn made of 60% wool/30% alpaca/10% acrylic. The yarn in my bag is a nice cream neutral colour that should go with anything.  A while ago I found a pattern on Ravelry that I thought I could use with this yarn and I decided that something mindless, would be the perfect pattern for me to knit right now.

The pattern is the Alpaca Cape Jacket by Siobhan Brown.  The pattern was written for Wendy Serenity Super Chunky, but I thought this yarn would be a good replacement.

The pattern is written so that the two halves of the cape are knit separately and then a seamed together at the back.  It is a very simple design, but that is what I wanted, and I don't think super bulky weight yarn lends itself well to complex lace and shaping anyway.

I knit this cape up so quickly over a weekend away, that I didn't have time to take "in progress" photographs.  It did take me a while to get round to blocking the two sections, before seaming it, but that is normal in my house.

I was surprised the pattern didn't require buttonholes, because the pattern obviously had buttons closing it at the front, but when I had finished blocking I realised that the stitches were so big that decent sized buttons would slip between the stitches.

I am really pleased with the buttons I got.  They weren't cheap, as they were from John Lewis, but as it is difficult to gauge how a button is going to fit through stitches without trying it, I needed to buy from a physical shop, rather than an online one.

The buttons are wood, which has been varnished and then lines scored through the varnish and top layer of wood.  They are really distinctive, which is good, as they are the main focus of the garment.

As you can see, the garment is not the most flattering of styles, but I can assure you, it is incredibly warm. As the weather has cooled down, I've worn it to keep me warm on car journeys and over the top of my Melia Cardigan when I go out on my scooter.  I am putting off the use of my big Winter coat as long as possible, by layering up the wool!

So, though the cape is not flattering on my body type, I still like it, as it keeps me cozy and warm and it was a fun mindless knit.  It's also nice to be able to put good use to a generous gift.  However, I think I know why the yarn was discontinued, apparently it sheds like a moulting dog!

For the first time in a while, I'm going to hook up with FO Friday on Tami's Amis, so if you want to look at some other finished work, click on the button.