Baby Camel Project

Mid last year as a curiosity, I ordered 100g of baby camel fleece blended 50:50 with silk from Fibre Arts Shed. It turned out to be beautiful stuff. Soft, shiny, slinky and lovely to spin.

It then took me over a year to find something to make with it. I found a cowl pattern I loved (Berilo cowl by Keka Guillén) but my yarn came out about 5ply/sport weight and the pattern was for light fingering. Besides, I didn’t have enough of it. Dilemma! After some grumpy stomping, I remembered that I had another 100g of commercially spun very fine laceweight yarn in the same blend, incidentally from the same seller. Ooo, could I make that work?

It looked like three strands of the fine yarn came close to matching the heavier handspun. So I swatched and yes, that works. The three strands is a little finer still but would work in the way I planned to combine it.

Then I pulled back the swatch and wound the fine yarn into three balls. Ready to go.

I figured that working with a slightly larger needle size would still work and I am not size tiny. My plan was to knit the fancy lower border in the handspun, then introduce the finer yarn worked three together and in alternating rows with the handspun, and finish with the finer yarn after the handspun ran out. This did in fact work well.

Here are the beginnings

and the whole thing straight off the needles. I messed with the pattern a bit to shorten it and make for a sharper angle of decrease in circumference. I am not blessed with a long neck. I also reduced needle sizes as I got to the last few sections.

and here it is pinned out to block.

I had quite a lot of the fine yarn left and it occurred to me that if the weather is cold enough for me to wear this, then I would want to wear a hat too and wouldn’t it be nice to have a matching one? I chose the “Burka Leaf Cap” by Lynette Meek. Again my yarn did not match the pattern, so size selection was difficult. I started with the small size on much larger needles, but at this point realised it was firmer on my head than I can tolerate. So I pulled it back and resumed with the medium size.

It’s an interesting design and a better choice for the soft drapey yarn than I realised. It’s lacey but almost entirely made of variations of rib. Lace within ribbing was a new thing for me. I didn’t block it so you just get one finished picture.

and the obligatory photo of them both on me.

I’m pleased with them. They function well, look nice, feel nice and I’m quite proud of successfully stepping through the pattern challenges. Of course I have no idea when I’ll get to wear them. Spring is sproinging and we are still and again in lockdown.

Rainbow Stocking Hat

I do like a silly hat and this is a very silly hat.

I’m sure I’ve said before that I’m enjoying working with colour in the cold, dim months. I had a bag of leftover 4ply merino yarn in gorgeous colours that I wanted to do something with. So I got them out and they kind of arranged themselves into a rainbow. A slightly unfortunately arranged rainbow.

I had also been thinking of making another stocking hat after having given mine away a few years ago. These two things could become one! I looked again at the colours and refined them down to a smaller selection, happily of very similar yarns. The grey is slinky superwash with 20% nylon. The rest are pure merino. All are lovely and soft to the touch. The green and red are the (nearly) yellow and orange previously overdyed for other projects.

When I started in, I wasn’t sure I would carry on. 4ply makes for many stitches. After I did the first few coloured bands I was hooked though.

I made up the pattern as I went along. I think I’d start with 6 fewer stitches and smaller needles but I managed to drag it in to fit quickly and neatly enough.

I do enjoy the way that bottom up knitted hats feel like they accelerate as you go. This has a 6 stitch reduction every eleven rows, or twelve rows nearer the end. So that acceleration was pretty slow, but still the later stages get kind of exciting.

And then it was done!

The reverse stocking stitch bands give it a bunch of structure and bounce. It almost sits up by itself.

I put a bead in the tip to keep it round. Said bead is really a reproduction medieval woolen button. I had spare and I thought it would stay put better than a shiny bead.

There is a lot of knitting and a lot of sproing in this hat. The two pictures below show it partially stretched out and then sprung back.

and of course there must be a pic of it modelled. I was concerned that it might be TOO silly but no, I love it.

Little custom spin rescue

Remember the Midnight Forest Hat? https://montjoyeblog.wordpress.com/2020/07/14/midnight-forest-hat/. It turned out that AdventuresInFelt was right and despite feeling wonderful in my fingers, it turned out to be too prickly for my forehead. I’m blaming the corriedale content. So, in order to be able to wear it I needed to make it a new edge in something non-itchy.

I’m in another phase of trying not to buy any materials, I have so much! I knew I didn’t have an exact match for the colour but I wanted to get as close as I could. I had some dyed black merino and some brown alpaca/merino tops that I thought might come close if I spun them together.

I’m really pleased with how it came out. If you squint, they almost look the same colour. The new spin is a bit thicker, which isn’t ideal but still workable.

It works nicely I think. Reads as the ground in the picture. Obviously I also changed the style of the edge. I wanted to use a bit more of the new yarn without adding length. I spun about 40g and used about 20g.

Another pic with it opened out. It does feel better on, though the weather hasn’t been cold enough to wear it for long. It’s ready for next winter.

Crystallize

Another new hat. I’ve used the American spelling because the post is named for the knitting pattern. Author Amanda Bell. I’ve liked it every time I scroll past it in my Ravelry favourites and the leftover off white alpaca merino blend yarn leftover from the recent cowl One for me seemed to be exactly right for it. It’s beautifully soft, the right weight and an appropriate and pleasing colour. It’s really not just one colour but pale grey and off white plied together, which gives it a bit more depth and interest. Not my spinning yet I can’t list a supplier or any other details. I bought it at a market several years ago and it wasn’t labelled with anything other than the fibre content.

The pattern has an interesting centre start

After the first lace chart is finished, one then needs circular needles but I didn’t have any small enough. So I treated myself to a set of tiny Chiagoo “lace” interchangeables. I may never use the smallest sizes but I needed both 2.5mm and 2mm for this hat. They are so dainty! the connectors need to be small enough for the 1.5mm needles and the cable is so fine that it has steel innards for strength. They are delightful to knit with.

Here is the hat straight off the needles

then wet blocked on a plate. The lace would have opened up even more on a larger plate but I didn’t want it that wide.

See, it really is a plate

and on, sadly overexposed

a better shot on, but not showing the pretty back/top

This is the large size done on slightly smaller needles. I have a biggish head and can’t bear pressure from the band ribbing. So I wanted it quite shallow. If I ever knit this again I might try knitting the small size in the lace pattern, with taller sides, but then not reducing for the band.

 

Midnight Forest Hat

I’ve had this lovely natural coloured alpaca/merino/corriedale yarn for a couple of years. It was Aussie Bale Project tops spun by Sharon Bowman and bought from her at the Bendigo wool show. I’ve been patting it for a couple of years. Time to see if there is enough for a hat.

I used the same stitch count and basic plan as the recent red hat but dropped the needle size to 3.75mm. I wanted some kind of interest in it so I went searching through my books and settled on a cabled tree pattern. This has the bonus of giving me a little cable practice, it’s something I’ve done very little of. I messed with it though and made trees of three different sizes and graduated the tops to make them look more natural.

After I was finished and found I had enough yarn left, pulled back the brim and reknitted it on 3.25mm needles to reduce the frillyness and improve the structure.

Then I blocked it. I might not have bothered but I had to wash the hat anyway as there was enough sheepiness left in the yarn to set off my allergies. I’m often amused by the strange assemblages of things I use for blocking. In this case, a poly hat blank base, built up to be taller with cut down file folders, the top filled in with an old tshirt and the lot in a plastic yarn bag.

Here it is basking in what little sun we had

Then I steamed it to soften that corner, and embroidered a crescent moon for accent. The camera really struggled with the very dark hat and the not as pale as it looks embroidery.

I like it and now I can both pat it and wear it.

Lacy red hat from white fleece

As part of my slow mission to learn by experience the properties of different kinds of fleece, I bought ~75g of Polwarth fleece blended with silk 70:30 as tops from Wool Chambers at last year’s Bendigo show. I got around to spinning it up a couple of months ago.

I was aiming for 4ply, which I think I managed straight off the wheel.

Then when washed it did what I’m told is the classic Polwarth Puff. I made that a bit worse than it might have been by the agitation required to dye it a slightly variegated red with food colour. So it ended up somewhere between 5 and 8ply!

and wound into a cake

It was originally going to be half a shawl, but it didn’t end up looking as well as I hoped with the other intended yarn. As it turns out, about 2/3rds of it has made a really lovely hat.

The pattern is the “Strathcona Beanie” by Megan Goodacre, except I’ve altered it to a simple skull cap shape. My yarn was too boofy to work with the recommended needles but I also have a large head. Going up to 4mm needles gave a nice fabric and a larger gauge but in a happy accident, delivered a great fit with the gentlest of grips on the head but not remotely tight. This one is straight off the needles and completely unblocked. I don’t feel the need and I don’t want to mess with the fit.

More Hat Rescue

It’s silly having hats in the hat box that one won’t wear. Having started by reworking the most precious one, I decided I’d continue and do a couple more.

This black on black stealth striped beret was one of my early adult* knits, maybe 20years ago.  Mohair and 8ply black “wool” with a cute beaded tassel.

It got worn occasionally but not for long. It fit well but the band was too scratchy to tolerate. Foolish me edged it with mohair which I’ve since conclude I shan’t use for not being able to stand the itchy.

So I carefully unpicked the band. Not easy! Blackity black on black. It was really hard to tell where to pull and cut. Then knitted a new band out of the delightfully soft black alpaca that I hand spun a few months ago. So much better.

Incidentally, I weighed the remaining yarn between each of the last few rows. I conclude that the cast off row (using a needle 0.5mm larger than the band) takes 25-30% more yarn than a simple rib row. Something I’ve been curious about for a while, and useful to know when playing yarn chicken.

Then there is this silly confection of a hat that I knitted a couple of years ago out of a bunch of colours of nice soft merino 4ply. However, that twisted rib band turned out to be too tight to tolerate.

So I chopped it off and replaced it with a plain rib band in the darker greener yarn on slightly larger needles, with the cast off in the blue.

It fits better now and I prefer the colour balance too. Can you see the sneaky line of tiny winky sequins that I added? For fun and to fill out the blank part of that stripe. I’d always wished I’d done another row of the purl spots. Fixed!

There is one more underperforming hat to deal with. That might end up being given away and replaced with a full re-knit. It’s fuzzy yarn and that doesn’t unravel well, and to fix it I’d have to reknit most of it like the handspun one.

*as opposed to items knitted as a child. Not anything risqué :-).

 

Handspun Hat #2

A pretty hat!

It’s made from leftovers of the beautiful fine alpaca I’ve been writing about recently, and the grey “Australian Wool” posted as New Wheel, First Spin.

It was made to match a jacket I made a few years ago, which hasn’t been worn a lot, partly because I didn’t have a hat that went with it. The colours are not absolutely identical but they are pretty close. The differences are even less noticeable with the separation delivered by normal wearing.

The pattern is based on “After the Frost Beret” by Melanie Berg. I’m extra pleased with myself because this little project required techniques that I haven’t used much. Cabling, Kitchener stitch grafting and an awful lot of picking up.  I had to mess with the stitch counts and needle sizes etc due to using three(well, four) different handspun yarns and I have a larger than standard head for a woman.

You start by knitting the plait like cable band. I think this is the first iteration which turned out to be too dense. I used two strands together of the nearly lace weight caramel coloured alpaca. I went up to 4mm needles and knitted an extra pattern repeat.

Then this band is grafted to make a circle and you have to pick up lots of stitches to knit the brim, then again for the crown.

I made my first picot edge!  But couldn’t tolerate the ridge caused by the cast off. So I pulled it back and replaced it with a simple stocking stitch roll edge. The little black border is really because I ran out of the grey alpaca and using the caramel looked messy. I don’t mind it now I’ve seen it for a while.

The crown ended up too tall, despite my theoretical calculations and decreasing twice as fast after I realised this was going to be the case. I could have pulled it back and reknitted… but just folding the excess to one side and adding a tassel is quite appealing I think.

 

Alpaca Goodness part III and done

The end product of my big winter project has reached it’s people. I’m extremely pleased with myself for managing to produce such an item from fleece through learning both fibre preparation and wheel spinning, then knitting it up. It’s a cowl, a neck warmer. A scarf that won’t fall off.

I’ve used the imaginatively named pattern “3-colour cashmere cowl” by Joji Locatelli. I found this pattern a few years ago and loved the variety of design elements and colour balance. This one is of course in 4 natural colours of fine alpaca and the depth of some elements have been tweaked a bit. One day I’ll make one for myself.

A couple of detail shots:

Modelling it to demonstrate a few wearing options. Wear it either way up

Or pull one end up over your head and it works as a hood too

Handspun Hat

When last she visited, Mama popped on my blue finnish hat and pronounced that she would like one please.  Hmm, said hat predates this blog, so have a picture or two:

It’s a loose and comfy fit. So comfy it’s the winter hat I wear most. In fact, it is on my head right now.

Remember this yarn?

I liked the idea of knitting some of my early wheel spinning promptly and I thought these colours would suit Mama better than me. Also, that she would be chuffed to have something made from my spinning, which happens to be about the right weight of yarn.  Downside is that this is very much not a good yarn to show off the lace pattern.

So I knitted it up, and it ended up too tall! It was sitting down over my eyebrows. Not good. Boo. After stomping about in annoyance for a day or so, I pulled it back from the top and reknitted it without the last full lace repeat.

Much better.

The black edge is a tiny bit of the natural coloured alpaca I’ve been posting about. For extra softness on the forehead. Mama likes it, so all is good.