Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Wooly-headed

I made a knitted and felted hat...that means I made it out of wool yarn and then washed it in the washing machine in hot water until it shrank. Wool does that. And that's not something you want to do to a nice wool sweater, unless it says it's machine-washable, just so you know!

So I got a nice green yarn and knitted a huge hat to felt down to the proper size. Here it is before I felted it:












Chain wool mail, anyone?

I tried rolling it up, but I still couldn't see:












The next day I felted it, shaped it, and left it to dry. When it finally dried all the wet wool smell was gone (good!). Have you ever smelled a wet sheep? No? Well neither have I, but wet wool smells NASTY! It's an awful, awful smell. And this was nice clean processed wool; I can only imagine how bad the fresh wool roving that spinners get must smell!

It doesn't look quite look how I wanted it to look, but I think that just may be my head. I must have a funny shaped head. Oh well. Or it may be the pattern...since I didn't want to pay the $5.95 to get that pattern, I went with a free pattern. And now that I look at it, it isn't really the same shape as the other pattern, though it's kind of hard to tell around the furry yarn (I did not use the furry yarn!).

5 comments:

Olivia Joy said...

Yes, I have smelled the "wet sheep" smell.....yuck!!! It is an awful smell!
My sister and I helped our friends sheer their 100+ sheep and then took home a couple of fleeces and washed, spun and knitted them up in to heavy duty socks and sent them overseas to soldiers.

Your hat is positively darling!!! It is soooooo cute!!!

Anonymous said...

I love the hat! And the photos! You look cool in the last one...and the first one is hilarious!

Jim says "Who wears chain mail over their face??"

N said...

Like this:http://www.a2armory.com/chainmailcoif.html

It just doesn't have an opening for my face. I don't know, that's just what I thought of when I saw it!

Anonymous said...

I just saw someone at church with that exact same hat... (as a giggly person would say after that... tehe... ha ha... hehe!)

N said...

REALLY?!?!?!?!?!?!? ;P