Here’s a thing I’ve been playing around with recently- knitting with unspun wool.
On the first attempt, I just stripped down batts as I went, which resulted in having to a lot of joins- not a big deal, but kind of slows the knitting progress. In an effort to make the actual hatmaking more efficient, I decided to use a diz to pull out a fairly consistent thickness of roving from each batt
It took a little while to get a feel for it, but then it worked out pretty well!
The roving is very satisfying to knit with, making huge, squishy stitches on size 13 needles.
For these hats I cast on 35 and 36 stitches. Talk about a quick knit!
Here they are a little closer so you can see more of the texture.
Fun to make, and amazingly warm.
I used a Figure 8 type cast on, like you might use for toe-up socks, but with two different circular needles. Then knit the hat upward from one set of the stitches, while leaving the bottom half of the stitches hanging out on the second circular needle.
Once the hat is knit, come back to those live stiches around the edge and either knit a couple rows if you think that you need a little more depth, or just cast off the stitches for the brim, and poof! you have a hat.
Here’s to the sheeps that make all this woolwork possible. I thought this was a cute shot of them all hanging around the shed hoping for some alfalfa treats this afternoon.
Have a great (if distant) Thanksgiving everyone 🙂
Gorgeous hats! I am guessing you remember that I like to knit with roving. But I haven’t used dyed wool, only natural colors. Your dyed roving colors are really nice. Happy Thanksgiving Denise.
Thanks Donna- these two hats were from random blends of carding leftovers- I really like how the color combos come through in the roving. Just got lucky I guess 🙂 Happy thanksgiving to you as well!
Yes, wonderful hats for those who wear them. I love to knit them but don’t like them on my head! I started a set of chair pads knit with some long-wool roving too coarse for clothing; I need to finish the set and put them to USE.
Michelle- how do you keep your head warm in the winter if you don’t wear hats? I have in mind to maybe do some chair pads or small rugs as well- but we’ll see how that goes!