FO- Handspun Artyarn Snail Hat

I've been admiring this pattern from E-Z for years now. I've had a few friends make them, but I loved my friend Knithound Brooklyn's the best.



She used her fabulous handspun and I just loved the colors.

I decided to take the artyarn plunge and use my corespun yarn for this pattern.



I've never knit with corespun, so I wasn't quite sure what I was in for. I ended up being better suited for something that needs a lot of drape. It had no real structure, so it probably wasn't the best choice for a hat that I wanted to have a pointy top.



Oh, that weird bump? Not a giant tumor. It's my hair- I had it pulled up in a high bun. Shoving my hair into the top of the hat is the only way I could get it from flopping over.



It's not bad. The yarn is kind of on the thin side for this pattern, and it's a bit too busy to see the swirls really clearly. I really want to make this hat again with a big, downy chunky yarn to do it justice.

It did knit up very fast- I think I started it while I was getting a pedicure and had it halfway done by the time my nails were dry. It might have taken a bit over 2 hours total. I can't wait to make another one. It's very easy on the yardage and it's super cute. This particular one isn't especially warm, but with the right yarn it could be.

The specs: I used size 10 needles and about 90 yards of my aran-ish weight handspun from a Butterfly Girl Batt. More about the corespun yarn I made back in October here. It's part of my A-Z stashdown challenge as well.

Corespun yarn

I'm a plain vanilla spinner. There. I said it.

I like myself a nice balanced 2-ply, and sturdy round 3 ply, and the occasional even lace singles. Not that I don't admire crazy art yarns. I look on, green with envy, when friends make piles of chaotic gorgeousness. I took a 2 day class that was nothing but freeing your inner anarchist at the wheel. It was fun, but I'm still not convinced that I could ever make anything useful.

Then, last month, I got a weird urge to corespin. After a few yards of trial and error, I found my rhythm and could. not. stop. It was addictive.



I started out with batts from Butterfly Girl in "Rocky Road". It was a soft, luxurious blend of merino, suri alpaca (the best kind of alpaca in my opinion), silk, bamboo, and a little bit of glitz. Corespinning lets you stretch out a small amount of luxury fiber- because you are wrapping it around a core yarn, you will end up using less. This is a perfect technique if you only have a couple ounces of fiber, but you still want the yardage to actually make something.

For my core, I chose some dk weight wool.



This was some yarn that I had frogged from a hoodie years ago. It is still too painful for me to knit with it. I didn't check to see if there was a pattern errata and followed the pattern with blind faith. I didn't question things at all, even when it had me put the hood where one would logically put a second arm hole. I just kept on knitting. Very painful memory right there.

Anyway, I found that hiding the yarn makes me feel better.

I ran the core yarn through my wheel and onto a bobbin, adding more twist. That way, I wouldn't end up with an over-twisted mess once I started the core spinning process.

Basically, you are taking your pretty fiber and letting it wrap around the core yarn. The Bellweather has a great tutorial (as always) on corespinning. She can explian the process much better than I can.

Here are the results:







Parts of the silk were a little tough to draft out evenly resulting in lumpy thicker sections, but I thought I got most of the skein fairly even. It was so fun, once I sat down I couldn't really stop if I wanted to, and it only took me a couple hours to complete.

I ended up with about 160 yards total. I'm planning on making a hat from this- I think the yarn will give it a fun, funky texture.