Brioche Hat

I needed a project small enough that I could knit it standing up (while waiting for the bus), interesting enough that I could do it for 20 minutes with nothing to distract me, but easy enough that I wouldn't need a pattern in front of me.

So I started another hat. Now you know why I have so many hat projects.

I actually already have a hat on the needles, but it is a complicated mosaic pattern on yarn that needs good tension (read: must be sitting down) on double pointed needles (read: doesn't travel well). I'll try to post something about that project sometime soon.

But today, I am going to talk about my new brioche hat.

For my birthday, my boss gave me a gift card to my LYS. Dangerous, I know, tempting me into the shop when I have so much stash to use already. But I was good. I bought two bulky-weight skeins of yarn, one solid, one variegated. They were super-soft (merino wool) and I was thinking that I needed a winter hat for myself, so I can stop borrowing my husband's.

Cascade 128 Superwash

I was looking for patterns that would highlight the two colors together. My mother-in-law has been working in brioche stitch, and it looks great, so I was thinking that I would try the same. I found a great brioche hat pattern in one of my knitting books: Weekend Knitting by Wendy Easton.

I don't use the patterns in my books nearly as much as I should. I have a bunch of them that I have bought or that have been gifts (that's actually most of them). I love my stitch dictionaries, but I rarely follow patterns too closely. And so many of the patterns I have are colorwork or need specific yarns: I would rather use the yarns I have.

That said, I had never tried brioche before, and I had heard that it was really hard. Having done it, it is not too bad, but takes a bit of time to get the hang of it and figure out what is going on. A youtube video helped too: trying to describe it is very difficult. But, I will put in my two cents: maybe it will help someone who thinks like I do.

This is the pattern in the round, which is easier (I found):

Set up (color 1): knit 1. *put yarn to front and slip 1 purlwise. knit 1 without putting yarn to back to make a yarn-over. repeat from *.

Round 1 (color 2): put yarn to from and *slip 1 purlwise (this will be color 1). yarn-over. purl two together (1 yarn-over of color 1 and one stitch of color 2). repeat from *.

Round 2 (color 1): knit two together (1 yarn-over of color 2 and one stitch of color 1). *put yarn to front and slip 1 purlwise (this will be color 2). knit two together without putting yarn to back to make a yarn-over. repeat from *.

Repeat rounds 1 and 2.

To do it flat, do a four row repeat: round 1 (color 2), round 2 (color 1), turn, round 2 (color 2), round 1 (color 1).

My hat looks like this so far:

Outside

Inside

The material is really stretchy and thick, and I love how the colors look.

Depending on how the crown goes, I might submit this one to the state fair.

Sheep to Shawl: Part IV

Part I covered washing the fleece, Part II covered prepping it, Part III covered spinning singles.

As of today, I have about 750 yards of spun, plied, and finished yarn. I think I will be doing one more skein, but I am taking a little break first and working on some bulky yarn to keep myself from getting into a rut. Still, I think it is time to show off some of what I have been doing.

When I last wrote about this project, I was about of a third of the way finished with the first bobbin. Two months later, I have finished two full bobbins-worth of yarn, plied them together, and finished the yarn.

I have a lovely tensioned lazy kate for plying, and it really helps to keep the yarn even.

Yes, I keep my lazy kate elevated with a box of Apples to Apples

I keep the lazy kate a few feet back from where I am sitting, so that the singles have a chance to even out as they are winding on. I don't know how much it helps though, since they have been on the bobbins so long that they have settled and lost their twist energy (though it will return when I hit it with a warm bath later).

Where with spinning singles, the fact that I don't have a lace setting for my wheel was nice for a beginner (it gave me a lot of time to draft, since I was treadling 3 times for every inch of yarn) the lack was very much felt for plying. It took what seemed like forever, and not much to do but let it run through my fingers.

After I had finished plying, I wound it onto my niddy-noddy. I counted, and there were over 250 wraps of yarn on it when I was finished with one bobbin-ful, and I had two bobbin-fulls.

The first skein, I tied it with black yarn, because that is what I happen to have in lace-weight, and it doesn't really matter. The second was tied with the small bit of remaining singles. To tie it so that it won't get tangled when I finish, I wove the yarn in and out in four places. I have seen recommendations to "make figure-eights" but I never feel like just two divisions of the yarn is enough, so I make about 8.

Skein #1

Once I had left it on the niddy-noddy for a few days to settle, I took it off and got ready to finish.

When I finish yarn I usually don't thwack the yarn to make a halo, or anything fancy. Because there was still some lanolin on this, I just swirled it around in really hot water with soap to reactivate the latent twist energy and get out the lanolin and oils from my hand. Because it was so yellow, I also gave it a hot bath with some hydrogen peroxide. I don't think it really did anything though, comparing  pictures before and after. Maybe I need more in the bath, but I am afraid of ruining the wool.

Skeins getting a bath

I don't have a large house, so I did all of my finishing in our bathtub with a bucket and a lobster pot (which we do not use for lobster). I hung the skeins to dry in the same place with plastic coat hangers.

The last step, after they were dry, was to twist them up for storage, and weigh them: 4.8 ozs, 752 yards of fine yarn.

Progressing nicely!

Part V can be found here.