Category: hats (page 3 of 4)

From scratch!

Ok, well, not really. But I’m getting closer. My friend asked me to make her a hat like the one I made for Evan, (remember the hat knitted on toothpicks?), but she wanted it to be charcoal gray with a lime green stripe and a white stripe. Now, this hat is made with sock yarn, and 3 different colored skeins of sock yarn would be pretty expensive, so I offered to dye the yarn myself from one bare skein. So I guess starting from scratch would be actually shearing the sheep, carding the wool, spinning and then dyeing it. I’m not quite there yet. But I can dye, and I’m learning how to spin too!

drying

So here we are, looking like a tangled mess, right after coming out of the pots.

Above we have all 3 colors waiting to turn into balls, and below we have 3 beautiful balls waiting to be made into something special. They stare at me while I work on other things….I can see their patience wearing thin.

It’ll be a great project to work on during the long ride we’re going to take this Thanksgiving. They’ll just have to wait a little longer…or maybe I’ll start earlier. After all, I did finish THE SUPER SECRET PROJECT and it’s blocking right now as I type! It’s quite lovely and I don’t know how I’m going to restrain myself from posting the pictures before I give it to its recipient. Must. Hold. Back!

 

And finally…

After the grape Kool Aid bath and a couple days spent drying over a chair, we ended up with this:

I can’t seem to get a completely accurate picture of the color, no matter what kind of light I hold this in, but this is pretty close. I’ve named the color Raspberry Dusk. I immediately wanted to see what it was going to look like knitted into something, but what? Shelly thought I should do another Star Crossed Slouchy hat, and since it’s such a quick pattern, I agreed. I really felt the need for some instant gratification. So here it is! The finale of my very first yarn dyeing experiment.

I’m ready for the big league now. I’ve ordered some yarn and some dye and I’m waiting for it to arrive. This weekend I’ll hit some more garage sales looking for big pots and crock pots and see what I can come up with. I’m ready people!

 

The Amanda Hat

I know I’ve said in previous posts how much I love the Sockhead Hat. Well, there is another hat that I’ve made 4 times now and I’d still make 4 more times. It’s called the Amanda Hat.

Not only is it as fun to make as the Sockhead Hat, but it looks better on me. Above is the green version I made for myself last year and wore for 2 winters now. My version is different from the actual pattern. The Lace Background Pattern they used, well….I can’t figure it out. I’m not too proud to admit when I’m beat. It’s not like I didn’t try it over and over…but I just couldn’t figure it out, lost all patience, and substituted stockinette stitches instead. It makes the hat soooo fast to knit and I think it looks great, if not just as good.

I decided to knit one for my lovely niece Gloria. But when I was finished, it fit this cutie:

So I let Emmet keep the hat, and started a new hat for Gloria, which I’ll leave to another post. I just love the shaping that happens in this simple pattern…made even more simple by skipping the lace background pattern.

Then my mom suddenly started knitting again, after many many years of not knitting. She made this beautiful scarf and sent it to me along with the extra skein of Noro yarn she had left over.

So I took the extra skein and knit up another Amanda Hat to go with it!

Soon I will post progress pictures of the works in progress I have going at the moment. Li’s socks are actually almost finished…they were supposed to be her Christmas present…for this PAST Christmas. Sigh…I never claimed to be a fast knitter.

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