25 | March | 2012 | Knitting In Flashes

I cast on for my first CCM hat on Saturday, March 17 and finished the knitting on Wednesday, March 21. I would have finished it sooner but I miscalculated my yarn amount and ran out of yarn. By about a yard or so. I ripped it back to the row before the decreases and all was well.

The yarn is a llama and wool blend and sheds like crazy! We have a septic system and I was afraid it would clog things up so I decided to felt it by hand with a 5-gallon bucket, hot water and new plunger.

I should have taken pictures but I did this in the bathtub Thursday evening. It was unseasonably hot and I was working up a sweat. The lighting was bad. Trust me the pictures wouldn’t have been good.

I added about 4-5 inches of hot tap water to the bucket, threw in the hat and started plunging. I changed the water every 15-20 minutes and filter out the loose fibers before letting the water go down the drain. After an hour (yes, an HOUR) of plunging, I had gotten pretty far but the hat was still too big for my head. I got my exercise that night!

I have a small head.

I put the hat in a mesh bag, tossed it into the washer with some old jeans and ran it through one wash cycle on hot. When I pulled it out of the washer, it was fairly dry. I shaped the hat and let it dry overnight.

It was lumpy and had some thicker spots. I emailed Carrie and she suggested I re-wet the hat and reshape it. I filled the bathroom sink with hot tap water and dunked the hat in. Bingo! It finally occurred to me that the hat wasn’t dripping wet when I took it out of the washer and that’s when I realized it had gone through the spin cycle. That’s why my hat was lumpy and thick in spots. I worked with the dripping wet hat to get the lumps and bumps out and now it’s better. Much better.

I went to my LYS (local yarn shop) on Saturday afternoon and bought a cotton/rayon blend to embroider a design on the brim. Not sure what I’m doing just yet but Carrie’s gallery inspires me. I love leafy and spirally things.