Friday, February 05, 2010

The Franken-hat!

So I knit a hat. I’m really proud of it. First entrelac, first use of Noro Kureyon.

I knit it big, and planned to felt it to make it super toasty.

It went in the machine, and it felted, but the cast-on felted too much! It was late, and I decided to cut off the bottom to see if that would help. Out came the scissors, and off came one inch.

Then, the hat fit around, but was too short. So, in the morning, I decided to try some surgery. I cut the too-tight cast-on edge off the earlier removed part of the hat, then started to sew the cut-off part back to the main hat. It’s going pretty well… I’m then going to hand felt the seam to try and tighten that up, and probably put a velvet ribbon around it or something to hide it. I’ll also do a bit of a whipstitch edge around the now raw-cut edge and hand felt that to keep the edge from getting all icky looking.

My husband says I should just buy another ball of the Noro and start over.

I’m going to persevere, though.

If all else fails, I'll just buy some more yarn.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Leap of faith

I knit a hat over the weekend. It was my first project in Noro Kureyon, and my first entrelac project. The whole wooly thing is now in the washer.

This is always a leap of faith. I've got to trust that I knit the thing right, and that the washing machine felting process won't go awry. I've successfully felted a few things before, but I was always meticulously following a pattern. I went a little off-road on this once, taking an entrelac hat pattern meant for bulky yarn and knitting it on double-stranded kureyon, in a loose gauge and larger size, with the hope of felting it down to fit my head.

It took a while for the shrinking to begin, but it looks like the thing is on its way. I'm really glad I took out the cast-on edge tonight, though, and did a really loose bind-off instead. That particular part still looks like it might be a bit tight. I'm hoping that the entrelac texture will cause the rest of the thing to felt up vertically and not horizontally.

Here's hoping.