More, more, more

I have more hats finished.  I finished knitting and seaming these last night.

Before felting

 

The first on the left is made using up the remaining yarn scraps.  The other 2 are made of one strand of yarn I dyed with a strand of undyed yarn.  All 3 are 100% alpaca.

After felting

Just a few minutes in the washing machine with hot water and detergent and ‘viola’! Three more felted hats are drying.  I left the scrap ends on the outside of the first and am not going to trim them on this one like I did on the first hat.  I’m curious to see which is preferred by customers!   

And here are the new soap scents I finished this week.

Four new soap scents

I felted 10 each of Lemon Bar, Patchouli, Rainkissed Leaves, and Vanilla.  They are available in my online store. 

The hats, soap and all my products will be at Shepherd’s Harvest!  Are you making plans to be there, too?   I’m looking forward to another awesome fun weekend.

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Happy beyond words

I’m not often speechless.  While often surprised by the creations I make with my alpaca fiber, I’m not usually as thrilled with the outcome as I was today.  I’ve been thinking about this hat for years.  I bought the pattern many years ago and 5 months ago I made these.  A few days ago I gave myself a pep talk and knit this.

Knitting complete

This was an idea that had been brewing in my head for a long time.  The white yarn is knit throughout the hat.  But the colored pieces are the left overs from the wrist warmers I knit.  I usually have anywhere from a foot to a couple yards of yarn left over from each ball of yarn I knit into wrist warmers.   I just randomly picked out colors from my scrap bag and left long tails.  At this point I was a little overwhelmed by the drastic contrast of colors and was crossing my fingers for a good outcome.

Tails to the inside

This pattern is a bit unusual in that the ‘public’ side of the hat is the purl side and knitting machines knit so that the purl side is facing out as I knit.  That is why all the tails are on the purl side.  So I carefully threaded them to the opposite side, taking to care to be sure each stitch was completed in the colored yarns.

Felting complete

Then I felted the hat.  I fell in love!  It was the exact result I had hoped for.  The tails got all tangled and dread lock-ish.

All the tails inside

Because of the felting the ends will not come loose, even though I didn’t tie any of them.  I’m contemplating leaving the ends on the outside and just trimming them after felting.  What do you think?

Hat complete

And here it is – not quite dry, but ready to go. 

The other side

This is completely unique.  I can never make an exact duplicate!  I have more yarn scraps and hope to make a few more that will be similar.  I love that the felting process softened and blended all the colors.

To felt a hat – step one

I completed the knitting of the hat to be felted (like the lavender one of a couple posts back).  This is 100% alpaca yarn, 2 strands of sport weight knit together. 

Before felting!

 

Here it is next to the wool prototype!  As you can see, there is a lot of shrinking to be done during the felting process.  But I like to have a few things to felt when I fire up the hot water bath in the wash machine, so it may be awhile before I felt this.  I knit this one with yarn right off the cones.  Why?  Because now I can weigh the hat and I’ll know about how much yarn to skein up and dye to make future hats.  As for this one, I can’t decide if I should leave it white, dye it before felting or dye it after felting.  What do you think?