Notes on Knitting

Oh knitting, you fickle mistress...I designated Sunday a day of rest after I spent Saturday moving Walking With Orphan's main office in all its entirety. I stayed in my pajamas and live streamed the 11:00 service from my church and knit.

Live streaming the service. Hermit life at its finest!

Penelope basked in the sun and enjoyed the bonding time.

Bask, bask, bask.

I finished the last little bit of one hat...

Hat #1. I love the cheerful and vibrant colors!

And got a good ways into a second hat.

Hat #2

These hats are a recently discovered, new favorite pattern of mine called Be Faithful. These are the 2nd and 3rd hats I've made with this pattern. And that's saying something because I rarely knit patterns more than once. The parallel between the title of the pattern and the fact that I have knit 3 hats using it is not lost on me.

At some point on Sunday I decided to wash some hand-knit items that were laying around. This included several hats, a large blanket/throw, and a sweater. Typically, I hand wash each piece (or 1-2 same colored pieces) in the sink with some no-rinse wool wash (like Eucalan). I did that with 3 of the hats. Then I decided that I would put the (very) large blanket, the sweater, and Hat #1 (pictured above) in the washer on a wool/hand wash cycle with cold water and Eucalan thrown in. After they finished washing I put them in the dryer on air dry, no heat for about an hour and a half. And guess what. My beautiful hat and part of the blanket felted.

My beautiful hat...

All felted up.

The sweater also felted slightly but not to the point where it's unwearable (which would have made me uber pissed). The blanket was ok. There were a few sections that felted more than others (due to the fiber content of the yarn) but overall it's still ok. But the hat. It took the brunt of the felting.

Now, logic tells me this shouldn't have happened. Cold water, little agitation, air dry. The only thing I can figure is that the hat got caught under the large blanket and there was more agitation than I thought. I know that the cardinal rule of wool is to NOT PUT IT IN THE WASHER AND DRYER (unless it's superwash) so I guess I got what I was asking for. Thankfully the hat is still wearable (just by someone much smaller) and I have more yarn to make a second one THAT WILL NOT GO IN THE WASHER OR DRYER.

All I have to say is: lesson learned.