FO#4: The Jayne Hat
Bad knitblogger. You are slow to post your FOs and recent acquisitions.
Right, the Jayne hat.
Last year, I asked my brother if he wanted me to knit anything for him, and all he wanted was a Jayne hat (because the boy has good taste). And I agreed in a heartbeat.
It should have been easy.
I looked around at patterns, and I knew that there was no way that I was going to get chunky yarn around here. Now I could – with some research and dilligence – have ordered the yarn online. But I wanted it *now*, so I went to the local shops.
I found three colours that were reasonably close, but the yellow was a different brand to the red and the orange (which were a crepe). Never mind. I went home, I wound the yarn into balls and cast on knitting with double thickness from both ends.
The difference between the crepe and the non-crepe was too much for me. A different texture might have been okay, but they turned out to be different weights, which was *not*.
Back to the drawing board.
I have a great idea. I can spin the yarn myself! What greater love than this: that a knitter should first spin her own damn yarn? Unfortunately, I did not have red or yellow dye (although ironically, I had orange). And as Teh Guild was closed over Christmas, I couldn’t waltz in and get any.
Instead, I went and bought some corriedale roving from Bella Head in red, orange, yellow (wildly BRIGHT red, orange and yellow) and I sat down and I spun.
I spun several samples, testing weights and constructions. I picked one and started spinning in earnest. I even kept a sample of the right sized singles taped to my wheel for comparison.
When I noticed that the yellow skein was considerably thicker/heavier than the orange skein – in spite of all my preparation – I threw them both. This was vastly unsatisfying because yarn makes neither a splat sound or a thump. Wisely, I refrained from throwing my wheel. The yellow skein, the orange skein and the remaining roving went back into the stash.
I was pissed off with all the setbacks, and did some other things.
After some time, I tried again, this time with Spotlight Basics 8 ply (pure wool for $2.99 a ball. It’s useful.) As I’m standing in the shop, I find an orange and a yellow, but there are two shades of red and I can’t remember which one is closest. I do the sensible thing, and buy them both.
I get home, and whack in the Firefly DVD. It turns out that the lighter red is pretty damn close. And the yellow isn’t bad either. The orange? Waaaaay off.
Fine. This yarn is wool. I have acid dye. You can’t stop me now! I over dye the orange to try and make it a bit brighter. Bizarrely, nothing bad happens. The wool doesn’t felt, and it dyes evenly. I wonder what’s *really* going to go wrong.
I start knitting. By brother has a big head, so I look at the pattern, look at the gauge and do the maths. I am not afraid of maths. I used to hate it, but now it is my friend. It makes knitting work.
So I add on a couple inches worth of sitches to the cast on, and go.
And go. And go. The instructions said [after ribbing] knit for 10 inches. I really suspect that it meant [after ribbing] knit until work measures 10 inches from beginning. Never mind. Free pattern, no complaints. I made the yellow bit shorter instead. (NB: the yellow bit looks extremely short in the photo. That’s because of the angle. It looks more balanced IRL. Trust me.)
And I changed the ear flaps to make them less curly. (Jayne’s are curly but not as curly as what you see in a lot of photos.) Then, the pompom. I hate pompoms. I hate making them. I’m going to spend the $10 on the plastic pompom maker, because if I ever have to make another pompom, I need whatever will make the process less painful.
Pompom complete, tied, all ends woven in, complete.
At frickin’ last.
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