Handspun hat

The BBE went out and bought himself a cheap little ACKrylic beanie last weekend. It was not flattering, it felt awful, and honestly - the Best Boyfriend Ever wearing a cheap-o acrylic hat?? Obviously I couldn't have that.

So I grabbed a couple of leftover bits and bobs of some spindlespun stuff and started knitting. I had a 3.5mm 16" needle. I figured I would get about 5sts/inch with the yarn... So I cast on 100 stitches and knit in 2x2 rib with some green silk/wool blend that I spindle spun last year, and used most of to knit a MD scarf for my mom. That reminds me - I never did get a pic of that project. It was nice too - wonder if it's in piccable form at the minute.

Anyway. I knew that I wouldn't have enough of the green to knit the whole hat out of, so I threw in some stripes of some blue which was the border on my Comfort shawl, I didn't even have enough of that for the entire hat, so I threw in some other wool/silk blend. Knit for about 7" total, and then did an easy k2tog for a decrease 10 times. (Knit 2 together knit 9 all the way around) knit another row plain - k2tog, knit 8 - knit one round plain - continue on in this fashion with the decreases being one stitch closer together every other round, until you have a couple of stitches left on the needles. Break the yarn and thread through the open loops on the top of the hat, and weave in ends.

It only took me a couple of days to knit it up. Probably could have finished it sooner, but I let it sit for a day or so because I just couldn't be bothered to find another needle of the same size. For some reason I wanted to do the two circs method - Though I quickly decided that dpn's are so much easier for me - and once I switched over it was done in no time.

But the funny thing is - it doesn't quite work on him - it looks great on me! But him? Not so much - so it looks like I'll get to knit another hat as soon as I get home. Another problem is that I think I pretty much used up my whole stash of "spun up masculine type yarn, that would work for a hat" on this one. Oh well, it's not like I don't have commercial yarn that would work nicely as well. We're talking about a Jayne hat. And of course he has been bugging me for a while to make him a Rock Star hat - you know, like the old beer can hats - but with RockStar cans... and dreads, and it has to be orange and purple. Sigh.

I also spun up all the silk that I dyed in the Bubble Yummy colourway. I ended up Navajo plying it with two strands held together to make a 6 ply yarn. I really don't like Navajo plying much, and there was a fair amount of swearing - and the yarn itself has some weirdnesses to it where it started to all go horribly wrong, and I just let the wrongness stay in the yarn because it was way too fiddly and hard to pull the silk out again. Sigh. I like the grist though, and it should work well in conjunction with the kid merino/silk yarn featured in my last post. Though I also have to say - that turned out to be closer to 8.5 ozs than 10 - which makes me feel a lot better about the yardage!

No pics of the silk - it's sitting on my niddy noddy at home - I ended up with 190 yards or so, and like I say, it will meld in nicely with the other stuff that I spun - now what to turn it all into? Lord only knows.

In other news - I've been toying with the idea of taking the 4 days after Christmas off.... I have quite a lot of vacation time built up, but I don't like to spend it (probably why I have so much built up?) Anyway - after I got sick a couple of weeks ago, and had to use 24 hours of PTO - I thought there was no way that I should use up more for "just" me time. Well, I started to talk it over with the BBE. He asked me what I would do with all that time off (if I take 4 days - it means that I have 10 days off in a row!!) I said - "Whatever the hell I want!" And that pretty much decided it for me - I haven't had any time off since a 4 day weekend for my b-day way back in June. I guess I really need it because after the paperwork had been filled out, and handed in - I seriously felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of me. I was all smiles for the rest of the day - and I'm just so happy, and in such a good mood, it boggles the mind. So YAY for time off! I just hope I don't spend the entire time playing solitaire, like I did yesterday - so insidious and evil!