Posts tagged ‘hat’
Mountain Goat Wool Happiness
Goat Hat
Handspun Enchantment Lakes mountain goat wool
on Brooklyn Tweed Altair hat
The Enchantments are enchanting.
A beautiful place.
With mountain goats.
Lots of them.
They are kinda scary.
And their wool.
I started collecting bits I found on plants and rocks, my husband and brother, joined in. We had to keep moving or I would have spent all day gathering wool. I ended up with two handfuls of goat wool.
On the grueling hike out, I thought and thought about my little bit of goat wool…
not enough to knit a project…a bit of trim…
A MOUNTAIN GOAT EMBROIDERED ON A KNIT HAT!
and I knew just the hat:
Brooklyn Tweed Altair
Photo by Brooklyn Tweed
The arches remind me of mountains and Loft colors Sweatshirt, the color of the granite, and Button Jar, the foliage in The Enchantments.
The goat wool was pretty dirty (I worried abouts pests and poo, but kept stuffing it into a ziplock bag inside my pocket).
I went online and researched how to clean fleece…
and worried.
I resolved to wash it in hot water…
and hoped to avoid felting it…
…and resigned myself to a felt goat sewn onto a hat if it came to that.
Success! Clean goat. No felt.
Second finer cleaning, picking out the hairs, and stuff I call “goat funk” – vegetation, skin, poo, whatever; I washed my hands a lot.
In the end I had 2 grams of fluffy fluffy goat down. As soft as any fiber I’ve ever touched.
Sigh.
I don’t spin.
On to Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat 2017 with goat fluff in hand, to ask the experts for advice. At a demonstration booth, the spinning expert described my goat down as “finer than cashmere” and declared,
“Judith MacKenzie could spin this”.
…
…
Well, that was discouraging,
until I spoke to Judith.
I saw Judith at an evening event,and told her my goat wool story; she invited me to come by her classroom the next day with my goat fluff, she would show me how it is done.
After feeling so discouraged earlier, I was walking on air (Judith does that to people!).
Next day at noon, I showed up with goat fluff in hand.
I was mesmerized, Judith produced a strand a yarn out of the fluff, like water pouring out of a pitcher. Beautiful.
I wondered how long it would take me to learn to do that.
I must have looked like a lost puppy. Judith took my goat fluff home with her.
Three weeks later, this beauty arrived in the mail, along with photos Judith had taken during the spinning process.
Judith’s photos:
ready to begin, goat down, tea, and cookies
skill
mountain goat single
beautiful 2-ply mountain goat yarn
Also at Madrona, I took Franklin Habit’s “Embroider Your Knitting – Level One” class on Friday. He suggested couching as a method for my goat. Couching keeps the precious fiber on top of the fabric, it avoids using up a lot of yarn on the reverse side and avoids the wear and tear of pulling the yarn through the fabric.
Couched embroidery of handspun mountain goat on handknit hat
I started by drawing a goat on paper and tracing it onto some interfacing, then basted the outline onto the hat with orange sewing thread.
Next, embroidered the outline through the interfacing (and basting) with laceweight cashmere.
I verrrry carefully cut away the interfacing, then I just winged it on the couching, lots of trial and error. I did those horns at least five times each!
ANEMOI Mittens To Match
UDATE on this hat:
Colinette JitterBug in Morello Mash
After five years of wear by a college student, getting stuffed into backpacks and pockets, this hat looks as good as the day it was knit.
I have knit socks that look worse by the time I’m finished knitting them.
Even the ties, which have been tied, knotted, tightened, and re-tied a few thousand times, do not have a single pill:
With yarn leftover from the hat, I knit these mittens to match:
ANEMOI Mittens by Eunny Jang in Colinette JitterBug color Morello Mash and Hazel Knits Artisan Sock in color Hoppy Blonde
Another Husky Hat
Apparently my DH cannot have too many Husky hats:
malabrigo SOCK in Violeta Africana and Ochre
Pattern?
cast on enough stitches
2×2 ribbing for a while
stockinette for a while
decrease down to nuthin
striping along the way.
Homemade Hat Block
I needed to block my Catherine Lowe beanie
folded kitchen towels into quarters lengthwise and rolled them together to get the right diameter:
wrapped a ribbon around it:
shaped the crown by pushing the center up:
covered it in plastic wrap:
put the washed wet hat on top, and pinned it:
final:
My new hat & cowl – Simple Couture design & yarn by Catherine Lowe
I took a class with Catherine Lowe. It made me believe I could design all my dream sweaters to fit perfectly.
If I could just find some time.
Some LOT of time…
Meanwhile, I’ll just knit something Catherine Lowe designed with her beautiful yarn.
CL IV alpaca silk yarn in black violet –
one big ball of yarn for both the hat & cowl custom wound for my order!
This CL IV is 4 alpaca strands and 4 silk strands put together, not twisted together.
It knit up incredibly soft and springy.
Simple Couture 4.01 cowl
Success!
DD emailed this hat picture, taken with her cell phone, and asked if I could knit one like it for her:
Result:
Colinette Jitterbug in Morello Mash from Knit Purl in Portland
DD says it’s “AWESOME!”
Me: 🙂
Husky Hat
My Catherine Lowe Headgear IV kit arrived!
The yarn is gorgeous…I am a little intimidated by the 23 page pattern instuction book.
At the opposite extreme, DH asked if I could knit a hat for him this week – I used leftover yarn from a pair of socks and no pattern.
I finished the hat as the UW Huskies clinched the Conference Championship, much better than the season the socks had.
quick hat, Blue Moon STR lightweight in colorway Husky
