A Wolf Hat

Lucky has two teachers who are both due in August!  His last day of preschool is on Friday and on Wednesday I decided to try to whip up two hats for these teachers.  Will I make it?  (Lucky is going to be in the summer program but neither teacher will be there... let's go!)

Lucky's classroom teacher's last name is Wolf, so I knew I wanted to make this baby girl a little wolf hat.  I went to my favorite crochet hat designer at Repeat Crafter Me and decided to adapt the Crochet Fox Hat for this baby girl.

I decided to make a 6 month sized hat since it would be useful when the weather starts to get cold.  Plus, Rowdy is now the perfect model (just under 5 months old).  I know that he outgrew the Aviator hat I made in 3-6 month size pretty quickly so hopefully the next size up will be a perfect fit.

I pulled out my trusty size H crochet hook and some KnitPicks Wool of the Andes Yarn in White (16 g, 35 yards), Coal (1 g, 3 yards) and Bramble Heather (21 g, 46 yards) and started hooking.

Rowdy's 3-6 month hat technically still fits on his head but is a little short and snug.  The 6-9 month hat that I'm making now is 4 more stitches around than the 3-6 hat and has one more DC row. Hopefully we'll like this fit!

I tried the hat on Rowdy multiple times as I was crocheting.  I think that it is going to be a good fit, and I finished off the base of the hat while he was napping.

The hat base fits Rowdy PERFECTLY!

The embellishments for this hat are actually pretty simple.  I like that the nose is worked with picked up stitches.  It took me a few tries to get it right but the effort put into it was worth it.

I've never done an HDC decrease before. I had to look it up but it wasn't so bad.  I can't believe I thought the cheek fluff was fringe at first, these triangles are way cooler.  The cheeks are also crocheted directly onto the hat.  Less things to sew together and stitch on, so they look fantastic!

My Rowdy has cheeks for days.  The cheek fluff is ADORABLE on him.  I may need to make him a little wolf hat like this one for the winter.

There are a few embellishments, but little crochet pieces are super easy to whip up.  I almost finished this whole project in one day but it was a little too hard to see at 9 PM at night so I was unable to finish up the ears.  Oh well, those can wait until morning.

 

The ears are so perky!  I love how well they stand up on their own.  Repeat Crafter Me really knows what she is doing!

Finally, little button eyes finish the cutest little wolfman you ever did see.  

This little girl will probably be in Rowdy's preschool class some day.  Hopefully these little munchkins will become great friends!  For now, I leave you with a few more Rowdy pictures as he models this hat.

Spinning Broken Violet

4 years ago today* I started spinning on a drop spindle.  This was really my second attempt at spinning but the first attempt didn't work out so well.  I've come a long way since then and since I had just recently published a few dyeing roving videos I thought it was time to try to create a spinning video.

*March 28, 2016

This is not a how to spin video, but a look at how I spun this particular yarn.  My followers frequently ask to see what I made with a particular yarn or fiber, and to be honest I haven't had a chance to knit or spin many of the fibers I've dyed.  They are in my queue of projects but end up being pushed backwards each time a new baby is born or another winter comes around.  Today, in honor of my 4 year spinnaversary I decided that I would take the most recent fiber I dyed and spin it up.  I broke Wilton's violet food coloring on braided roving which gave some really awesome speckles of color.

This spinning video is not a tutorial.  I am not trying to teach you HOW to spin on a Kromski Fantasia like my trusty Sandry, but really more showing the decisions that I made when spinning.  If you gave the same fiber to 20 different spinners you would get 20 different yarns.

Here are some of the questions that I think about before I start spinning:

• How many ply's do you want?  (1, 2, 3, N-ply etc)
• What direction will you spin the wool (S or Z)?
• How thin will you spin the yarn?
• When drafting the fiber, how will you divide it up?  You could pull the fiber apart to do a gradient, or create long or short stripes depending on how you start.  
• Do you want to create a specialty yarn by introducing beads, different thicknesses, thread or anything else you could imagine?

To be honest, I don't always think VERY hard about these questions.  I try to let the fiber speak to me and as I start spinning I decide how thick or thin to spin it.  I usually make a decision about the number of plys and the direction before I start, but sometimes even that can change as I go along.  

Today I'm going to make a 2 ply yarn.  I will spin it traditionally with Z-twist singles (spinning the wheel clockwise) and plied with an S-twist (counterclockwise).  Sometimes I weigh the fiber after separating it to adjust, but my singles aren't perfectly regular so I frequently with have a few extra yards on one bobbin even if I start out dividing the fiber evenly.  

I'm not that good at planning out the thickness of my yarn  yet.  I sort of let the fiber speak to me and try to stay consistent with how I'm drafting it.

I wish that I measured the WPI of these singles.  Maybe they are fingering weight?   

Spinning is a lot harder to finish up these days between Lucky, Rowdy and Indy.  Sometimes I'll sit down to start spinning and someone will wake up, start barking or need a snack.  I can't spin while Lucky is awake because he will want to play on the wheel, too.  

Time to ply!  I never know how even the bobbins will be.  In the past I've weighted them but really it doesn't matter too much.  I just try to start with as even an amount of yarn as I can and then try to spin consistently.  

After I finished plying the yarn there wasn't very much left on the second bobbin.  Wow!  I didn't even weigh the fiber this time.  Normally I'd use my ball winder to create a center pull ball and then ply from both ends, but the remaining yarn is short enough that I just wound it around my hand.  I plied the yarn from this little ball.

I wound the 2 ply yarn onto my PVC pipe niddy noddy.

81 wraps =324  feet = 108 yards

If I measured the WPI I didn't write it down.  I think the yarn is probably a heavy worsted but I will need to update this once I can confirm it.

The little skein was not set on the niddy noddy. I wrapped it around my yarn and hung it up to dry.  The skein looks a little fuller and bouncier to me, but it is also possible that the original singles were thicker.

Broken violet food coloring is one of my favorite things to dye and then to spin.  I love the way the colors break into multiple tones.  The depth of color is amazing!  

Make sure you check out the video of my spinning this yarn!  Let me know if you think I should make other spinning videos.

Spinning started and completed 3/28/16.  Plying completed 3/29/16.

Breaking Wilton's Violet Food Coloring on Crocheted Roving

Breaking Wilton's Violet food coloring is one of my favorite dyeing activities.  I know I claim to have many favorites, but my youtube channel fans really seem to like the dye breaking videos.  Whenever I want to play with a new dyeing technique, I come back to breaking Wilton's Violet food coloring.

How does the violet breaking work?  Well Wilton's violet is composed of two different food coloring colors, Red #2 and Blue #1.  The red dye absorbs to the fiber fast while the blue takes more time to bind.  This means that the fiber to touch the dyebath first absorbs the red dye while the blue time has more time to diffuse and travel through the fiber - resulting in the colors breaking into fuchsia, blue and purple.

Breaking Wilton's Violet Food Coloring on a Braided Crochet Chain

Video Contents

• [0:00] Introduction
• [0:17] Crocheting the roving braid
• [1:26] Setting up the dyebath
• [3:57] Adding the dry braid to the dyebath
• [5:46] 10 minutes later
• [6:10] removing the roving from the pot
• [6:37] washing the fiber
• [7:38] unravelling the dyed chain of roving and final conclusions

I was feeling very optimistic about this crochet braid.  I figured that when I added the dry yarn not only would I get some breaking on the outside of the braid, but I might also see some pale blue on the less exposed sections of roving.

Before even unbraiding the roving I knew this was a success.  Immediately I saw sections of pink and blue on the yarn.  I was delighted!

I love this braid so much that I almost didn't want to unravel it.  I wanted to hang it on my wall and see the ombre effect that had overtaken my fiber.

However, since I was making a video I needed to unbraid it.  I'm so glad I did!  The transitions of color are stunning and it couldn't have worked out any better.  

This fiber demanded to be spun really quickly.  This pull was so strong that I decided to have a little extra fun with the spinning.  Stay tuned for tomorrow and you'll hear some more about it!