Felted Pot Holders

I found myself in need of a pair of pot holders and I felt like doing a bit of simpler knitting. Realising that this was a good project to use some of my early handspinning made me even more keen.

Bits and pieces of handspun yarn dating back to 2015. I used some of this and added in a few other bits. Some I dyed blue, but I didn’t use the bluest yarn in the picture! .

I had a few goes at making up a pattern but wasn’t happy so that all got pulled back and instead I followed “Easy Pot Holders” by Junko Nakada. That went so much better. I started with a couple more stitches per side because my yarn was thinner than called for in the pattern. The neat two row colour arrangements are deliberate but the softer changes are random. Random they may be but I’m very happy with where those colours landed.

Then I popped them in with a load of laundry to felt so they would be thicker and better at insulating. A short and slightly nervous wait before I could see how they came out but I didn’t fancy felting them by hand. Happily they are fine and pretty much exactly what I wanted. Now to hope they don’t get eaten by moths. If I use them often they should be ok I think. The kitchen is about the lightest room in the house which clothes moths don’t like, and they haven’t eaten my woolen double ended pot holder that I made years ago.

A couple more pictures to show before and after sizing. They only shrank 10% in width which was less than I expected.

Madame Thrum

When I offered to knit a hat for a friend, she replied by bouncing about saying “Thrum, thrum!” Well, that wasn’t quite what I thought I was offering, but I was up for the challenge. I had some idea how they are made after chatting with a friend who was making one and backed that up by buying Sally Pointer’s Pattern .

It’s made very much like a beanie, but without a rib band and with extra bits of yarn added in every so often. Thusly:

The thrums end up on the inside while knitting, so when done, it looks rather squiddly

and the right way out

and on, just for laughs. I might have made it a bit too tall, oh well.

These were fairly common hats back in 16th to 18th centuries, especially for sailors. Common colours were apparently brown and blue, sometimes red or black. I love that they were at least sometimes made from loom waste (thread left after weaving). We decided to put blue dye through it. Unsurprisingly, it ended up green:

Then one needs to felt it. This took rather a lot of effort, probably more than usual because there was quite a bit of alpaca involved. The thrums are fully alpaca and handspun. They were matting up enthusiastically. The knitting was done in Drops “Nepal”, a mix of wool and alpaca. This is supposed to be feltable, but was reluctant. It got there eventually though and we ended up with this quite christmas tree looking object. Highly amusing but feels nice to wear. I still think it’s too tall and I rather wish we had left it the original ginger but I’m really pleased it did work. I learned lots and the process was interesting and fun. Happily the recipient and I have the same sized head.