YIP.6.9 – Handspun Hat!!, originally uploaded by earthchick.

So here it is, my first handspun handknit. The spinning is a typical beginner yarn, and the hat is too big (though it’s modeled here by Little Buddha, I meant it for My Old Man – but it’s too big for him too). Still, I am thrilled with it.

The fiber is “Midnight” BFL from Stephanie. Have you checked out Spinning Colors before? Stephanie dyes such lovely yarn and fiber, and she also occasionally offers her own handspun-hand-dyed yarn. I love her sense of color. The colors in this fiber ranged from a deep almost-black blue to a pale almost-white. (Stephanie and I have the same birthday – though she is many years younger than I am – and I finished spinning this yarn on our shared day! It was my second finished yarn and my first hand-dyed spin.)

You can see I don’t have much consistency with my spinning yet.

Plying really fixes a lot of problems! Though you can tell it’s still a thick-and-thin.

This is 4 oz. of fiber, which I spun into 214 yards of 2-ply, 12-ish wpi. I’m not sure the final yardage on the hat, though it is definitely somewhat less than the total amount.

pattern: Kim’s Hats from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts, the garter-brim version. I knit the man’s size.
needles: size 8
dates:June 6-8

I will probably rip this and re-do it, either as a smaller version of the same hat, or as a Scholar Collar. In the meantime, though, I enjoy looking at it and fondling it.