Another hat from Hats completed! I've skipped past the Tam at the moment, because I have to do some final touches to that before it's ready. Instead I moved on to a chunky knit hat; the reason being, a long time ago now I bought a couple of boxes of 'job lot wool' from eBay, thinking it a bargain at £40. The pictures showed many cones of machine-knit wool. Many, many cones. The description was a little vague, but I took a punt anyway. Two huge boxes arrived - good stuff. Except that it wasn't exactly good stuff; it was 1ply and 2ply wool that looked like it had been stored in a shed for years. Nevertheless, it was workable, just thin. Very, very thin. Useless on my knitting machine and a pain to knit with. I tried out lace knitting without much success (or patience), and then I started to combine cones to make 3ply and 4ply yarn. That seemed to work a bit better. I have an unfinished pink top I'll show at some point from my first combining experiment.
Now, however, I'm a bit sick of having two huge crates of wool in my bedroom and really want to get rid of the stuff! So a couple of nights ago I had the brainwave of joining up every possible cone of the same or similar colour together to make a chunkier yarn - and it worked! It's fiddly and impractical, but it worked. I combined all the different shades of red into an interesting, not too bright tone and I now have a 'Ribbons and Bow' hat to add to the ever-growing collection... :)
Only fifty more shades to use up!
