The Entrelac Hat

This hat was supposed to be a challenging project, picking up a new skill with a new yarn.  I expected to be tearing my hair out, and thankful that I don't have much time to knit!  I should have been frustrated and tossing it back in the bag!  What's wrong with me?

Entrelac is...well...easy!  Much easier than I expected.  It's just a simple back and forth knit/purl pattern.  There's a couple decreases and stitches get picked up.  It's really not all that bad.  In truth, it's quite simple!  I'm really happy with that fact, but it's also a little disappointing.  I was looking forward to a challenge since my fall/winter shawl is on hold until I can get my hands on my new needles.  A challenge was definitely not what I got.

I have to admit, I almost don't want to finish the project now.  A part of me is okay with keeping it on hold on my needles until the end of time.  A part of me doesn't want to be bothered with working on something so simple.  It's sad when you get bored easily.  At the same time, a part of me can't wait to see it finished, with the beautiful colors and the silky soft yarn.  Paton's Bamboo Silk is a deliciously wonderful yarn!  I can't wait to have all the colors knit up!

On top of that, I've got a wonderful reason to be knitting.  I need a cute new hat that will flatter my new dreads.  I want it to be done already so I can have a hat that fits well with my dreads, and has a bright, cheery, contrasting color.  Is that really so much to ask?

It's times like these where I really need someone to motivate me to finish what I've started!  I know I'll be thrilled when I'm done with it.  The process isn't the most boring of slogs.  I just need to get my tail in gear!

The Dreads Are Done!!!

It took hours and hours of felting, to the point at which I wanted to shoot someone, or never look at a piece of wool to felt again.  I didn't even finish them all before starting to put them in my hair, which was probably a good thing, because otherwise I never would have gotten those dreads in my hair!  I would have been at it forever!

After that it was three days of having my hair yanked on, pulled, tugged, and brought to order.  Bobby pins were rammed into my scalp in an attempt to get the non-sectioned hair to stay put.  There was a bit of a conversation about my bangs, which I think came out decently cute.  Even so, I was tempted to never have my hair done again!  I swear, I can't wait for these dreads to finally grow into something more....dread like?

In the end I've got 95 new dread babies in my hair!  They're all extensions, but over time they'll start to dread up on their own under the extensions.  I know it can take a year for dreads to actually start growing and gaining length.  I'm going to have to get myself a nice little crochet hook to pull in all the little loose bits that try to escape.  Even so, I'm pretty satisfied with the end result.

The only down side to wool dreads is the cling factor.  When wearing jackets and the like, my hair tends to stick to me more than anything else, making it a bit rough to turn my head.  I'm sure I'll get used to it, but until then, I think I'm going to look forward to putting my hair up all the time.  I'm already liking the ease at which I can pull my hair up and use my own hair to tie it up out of my way!  It looks really cute!  I can't wait to see how it's going to start looking as it grows out!

Too Much of a New Thing?

I'm starting this new hat.  It's going to look awesome!  It's an entrelac hat, a knitting skill I've never undertaken.  I'm working with a new yarn that I've never used before, compliments of my swap partner.  It also required a new cast on, which I thought would look wonderful!  It's a tubular cast on that requires you to pick up the stitches from your cast on and continue on with the project.  It sounded wonderful and looked even better!

Unfortunately, after I attempted to cast on, I found that the yarn was, well, not co-operating.  Knitting into that first row was like torture, though the rows after that weren't too bad.  Then trying to pick up those stitches, that was a nightmare!  I was beginning to wonder what I did wrong!  Now I think I'm just going to go back and knit it the way I typically start a hat, doing the ribbing in two needle sizes smaller and go from there with a regular cast on.  I might be adventurous enough to try that new cast on again, should I decide to start all over, but for now, I think I'll be happy just to try one new skill and one new yarn at the same time!

Improvised Hat

This is it!  I'm flying without a pattern here!  I've decided I want to make a hat for the baby for winter.  After searching for patterns that would use the right amount of yarn and be flattering on a boy, I simply couldn't find what I was looking for.  I decided to try it on my own.  After all, I could make a cute little ribbed hat without much worry over fit.  It doesn't take much to fit a hat on a baby.  Just cast on a bunch of stitches, about proportional to your gauge and the size of the head and go.  I already had the gauge swatch.  I just needed to measure it off the longies.  The baby's head was measured and we were off!

Things were going pretty well.  I had a good feel for what I was doing.  We were making progress.  I had knit a good part of the way up and decided to start decreasing for the crown.  There was one slight problem.  It's been so long since I've knit a hat that I couldn't figure how to do decent crown decreases!  I found a website that gave me some suggestions, but it's not like socks.  There are a million and one sock recipes out there!  Hats don't seem to have any recipes at all!  I guess it's because those who knit without a net when it comes to hats generally have made enough that they've got it all in their head.  They don't need any help with it.  They just do it!  Not me.  I rarely make hats, and now that I was, I was stuck.

I have to admit, I got rather daring.  I started throwing those decreases in there, just to see how it would turn out.  I had some vague concept of shaping in mind, though I'm not entirely sure I was sane when I made that decision.  The hat is now too long and will likely require to be rolled up so my baby can see!  Still, I've got a pretty good science on this thing.  I'd like to think that it didn't turn out all that bad...I hope...

Motivation Has Struck!

You know how I was saying I was never going to get the dreads done?  That the felting was taking forever?  That it seemed like the project that just wouldn't die?  I don't know if I ever wrote the statement that I was hating the idea of all the time required to put them in my hair and everything else.  All in all, I was so done with this project.  It was just too much work, too much effort, and too much time.  Who needed that kind of a project anyway.  I had to admit it.  If I wanted dreads in my hair, it might have been quicker just to dread my hair and forget the wool extensions.

Well, I was wrong.  In just one day I managed to knock out thirty of these things, one right after the other.  I was able to plow through them all in no time!  I was quite impressed about how fast everything flew through.  I was half expecting to really have to work at it, that it would take six million years, and that I'd never want to felt anything again, and then the inspiration just struck.  I don't know what it was, but the dreads were rolling out like crazy, like nothing!  I could knock out ten of them in a half hour!  That's so much more impressive than the ten in an hour I was working at before.  Instead of having to bribe myself with "just one more and I can", I found I was able to dive into it with "if I just do one more, I'll have!"  Each dread was one step closer to being done and having these dreads up and in my hair!  If I didn't have to have the last of them soak for a while, I probably would have plowed through them all in one night!  I'm almost there!

On final count there will be 132 dreads.  There are a whopping twenty left to do, and I'm sure those will go up in no time once they're soaked and ready.  It's not as many as I originally wanted, but I'm not doing my bangs, so I'm sure it will work out to be okay.  That means I'm almost done!  Twenty more and they'll all be done!  Then I just have to put them all in my hair.  They're all soaking in the bucket and ready to go.  It's almost go time for these things!  We're almost done!  I'm so excited!  Now the only remaining question is how to get them in my hair...and who to recruit to help put them all in!  132 dreads is a lot of dreads!

The Felting that Will not End!

The day starts off with all the dreads in a Walmart bag.  They're just waiting for the perfect time to be felted up to be used.  I was inspired at the beginning of it all.  This shouldn't be too hard!  It's just felting a little wool.  That doesn't take too long and I'm sure I can knock them all out in a sitting or two!  The roving was so incredibly soft that I didn't have a single doubt about getting it done.  I would love working with this stuff!  It didn't even look like that much.  Of course, in this picture, it really isn't that much.  It's about half of the roving I started with.  I'd already managed to finish half of it before even thinking to take a picture of it all!

Then came the work of felting.  The first twenty were done in no time.  I was sitting outside in the sunshine, talking with my boyfriend.  We were just enjoying the day.  It was peaceful and calm.  With every dread worked up I was inspired to jump right in and do the next.  I kept thinking that I should take a break, but no, I had to do just one more.  I mean, look at how pretty they were turning out,a and how quickly they were drying!  When it got too cold, I went inside, figuring he and I would sit outside another day and work them through until I was done.  If the twenty went up this quick, the rest should be done in no time!

Wouldn't it figure, the next day was cold and miserable, and the few days after that.  I would have had to sit outside alone as my boyfriend was at work by the time it was nice.  I just wasn't feeling motivated.  I did a few in my room mate's bathroom while talking to her, which seemed to go up pretty quick, but the ones I did in my own bathroom, sitting in isolation, working away were the worst.  It was a long, boring slog through felting.  It seemed to take forever, even though each dread was felted in five minutes or less.  Each time I pulled out a dread, I'd count the ones I had already drying and tell myself, "Just five more and I'm finished with the next set of ten, then I can take a break".  Last night I got to the point of bribing myself after every three done.  I'd hang them to dry on hangers in the bathroom.  One would think seeing them up there would give me some sense of accomplishment, but no.  Instead I just look at them and think about how many more I need to do until I'm done.

I have to admit, I'm making progress.  It may not be as fast as I had hoped.  I may not have had them all pounded out in one day, but I'm getting there.  Through bribery, grim determination, or hopes of having these infernal things in my hair soon, I'm going to finish them.  I've already surpassed the half way point.  Things should be getting better from here, right?  I should be able to count down and be excited about how quickly they're getting done.  Well, I somehow think that's not going to be the case.  I have a feeling it's going to be a long, hard slog, right to the end.

However, I have made myself a promise.  All I have to do is finish three quarters of the dreads and I can start installing them in my hair.  That's ninety-six dreads that need to be done before I can start sectioning and installing.  I'm not far off that count!  So far I've got seventy-two!  To finally be ready to start installing, I need to have twenty four more done today.  I think I can do that.  I hope I can do that!  Then the last thirty-four or so should be nothing once I see how great they look in my hair!  After all, there will be all that excitement about getting it done!  So maybe things will pick up once I'm able to reward myself with something like that.  I mean, two more hours of work and I should be able to start the hours and hours of installing the dreads...and three more hours of felting to go...thinking about it that way...yeah...I'll never be done...

The Dreads in Progress

Well, I got the roving.  I eventually got myself some ribbon.  I got myself settled in, and decided to make some progress.  Let me tell you, these dreads take a long time to make!

So, here's where I stand for step one.  It took a minor eternity to pull off all the roving in pieces the right side.  It took just as long to cut all that blasted ribbon!  I swear, it was going to take me forever to separate it all and get it all ready to be dreaded!  I carefully attached each dread to the ribbon, and expect things to go quickly after that's done.  Well, as quickly as felting can possibly go.  I was smart enough not to just toss them all in a bucket of water as I went.  I have a feeling I'd be at it for way too long of a sitting if I decide to do it all at once, so I'm going to do it a little bit at a time, when I'm feeling inspired.  Here's hoping that it all gets done quickly!  I want my dreadies for my hair!