I’m new to felting - but some yarn found it’s way to me that demanded to be felted.  Here is the before, where I am wearing the hat:

Huge, isn’t it?

Then here is the after, where the daughter is proudly displaying her new head-wear:

It’s totally cute on her. It’s really really thick. I used a front loading washing machine to felt it, and ran it through two wash cycles to get it to this size. If i was to make this same pattern again i wouldn’t make the top of it quite so deep as it is deeper than I like on her head. It’s a tight fit too, which means I should have stopped felting it sooner.

The yarn was a manos something or other -  A thick/thin yarn. In several places where the yarn was super thin I did some wierd double stitches to keep it thicker. The final hat has an almost boucle texture.    The pattern? Fiber Trends single strand worsted weight rolled brim hat pattern, named something ingenious like "Felted hat #2".

Moving Day Countdown: Exactly 1 month to moving day!

I got a new camera and of course have to go around and test it out to see how it does. I had this hat sitting out and it begged to have a picture taken of it:

(click for larger version).

The pattern is Snowflake Flurries, and it comes with a matching sweater (in three sizes) and a hat pattern. I designed the sweater pattern and my super-sneaky friend Rebecca knit the sweater and designed the hat based on the sweater pattern while I was pregnant with Alex (and pretending she was actually knitting her son one the sweater). This was more than 2 years ago and sadly the hat doesn’t fit him anymore. I have the pattern written up, and want to sell it (because it is totally cute), but it needs a bit of fact checking on it’s numbers in the various sizes before it can go up for sale.

As for the camera - The resolution on this camera is just ridiculous (7.2 megapixels anyone?) and it’s not even the highest res camera you can buy. It’s a simple point and shoot; can take videos (although at lower quality than a digicam) which will keep going until you run out of space on your sd card.

Katie finally agreed to wear her hat and scarf for a photo. The gloves are some store bought ones she’s had for a while. They matched really well, so she has a full "set":

Doesn’t she look angelic? Ha! :)

Not my favorite colors, but I have high hopes that my eldest offspring will like it (click for slightly bigger version):

The yarn is a 100% washable wool, can’t remember the brand name.  Softens up nicely when washed.  The colors available are pretty good too.  It took 2 balls for the Brioche Stitch scarf.   I used scraps of the light color to mix up the fringe.

The hat was knit with two balls; one light one dark pink.  I flipped through my Dale books until I found a snowflake/flower pattern that looked right. Did some very rudimentary math, cast on and away we went. The X row is from another dale pattern in the same book (which also contains Bjerk and Hardangervidda); I wanted more pattern up at the top instead of just all light pink so added that bit. I had more light pink yarn than dark so that’s why the top is light pink. Overall I think it came out really cute and I’m extremely pleased with the looks of it.  I can’t wait to see if she likes it Christmas morning!

A long time ago, I learned to spin yarn.  I learned how, bought a beautiful spinning wheel (the Schacht double treadle). It even has a small lightening bolt on the very front of it. 

The only thing I’ve ever knit from my own handspun was a hat.  I wore it for about a year (only occasionally as it’s super bulky weight yarn and it doesn’t get that cold here that often).  I was never completely pleased with how the top of it looked.  A few weeks ago, I decided that I just had to rip it out and start over. Well, not quite completely start over.  I didn’t rip all the way down to the cast on. I did make the ribbing on it shorter, and wanted to redo the decreases at the top.

I redid them, almost the same way I did the first time.  Gee, big suprise - I wasn’t pleased with it!  So I ripped it out again (not quite as far), and then set it aside for a bit. Not totally aside, as it was out on my kitchen counter without needles in it for a day or five. 

I just finished the hat, for the third time, and VOILA! I love it!

The ribbing is about half what it was before.  I’m still not totally happy that it doesn’t turn where I want it to.  Does anyone have a good way of forcing a turning row when moving from ribbing to stockinette?

But the best part of the hat now is the top:

BEUUUUUUUUUUUUTIFUL!

I’m so pleased.

What did I do different?

The first two times through, I sort of followed the pattern in The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns.  It has you basically knit a tube until it’s long enough and then do a lot of decreases really really fast.  This looked horrible in the big yarn. 

The third (and successful time) through, I started my decreases much sooner. I was doing k6 k2tog around, then a plain row, k5 k2tog around, plain row,  and so on. Until I got to k1 k2 tog. I then switched to smaller needles**, and did k2tog around.  Once I had like 6 stitches or so left, I took the first two stitches and put one over the other (without knitting any) like a decrease, and the same with the next two stitches. Then I had three stitches left (don’t check my math, I’m guestimating) and ran the yarn through all three, securing the tail on the underside of the hat.

** Since I know Joann will ask, when I first made the hat, YES I had to buy needles.  This time around, I didn’t :)