Saturday 27 September 2008

Wool Addict

I have a problem, I can admit it so I'm half way to solving it. The only problem is I'm not completely sure I want to solve my addiction.

I am addicted to buying wool, I love getting new colours and textures. The addiction is compounded by the fact that every lunch time I have to pass a wool shop, outside the owner puts baskets of yarn to tempt me, in a variety of colours all 50p a ball.

Fifty pence! For a ball of yarn, mostly acrylic but always pretty pretty colours. As a result I have many many single balls of wool and very little to do with them. I did but a book on Amazon amusingly titled 'Two Balls or Less' which I always want to draw a question mark at the end of when I see it. The problem with the book is it's very specific on the type of yarn required and my addiction is more of a magpie style impulse rather than having any long term plan as to what the wool could be used for.

As a result I keep experimenting like crazy. One of my experiments which has turned out rather popular are these crocheted hats (with or without ear flaps).
I make them up as I go along but you could easily create your own by finding a double crochet hat pattern and just changing the yarn every couple of lines. That is literally all I do. For ear flaps put the hat on your head and shove crochet needles through where you think the ear flap should start and end. Attach your yarn and crochet backwards and forwards decreasing at each end of every row so you have a big triangle shaped ear flap. I usually end with 8 dc thickness of flap. I then use about 4 lengths of 4 colours I've used in the hats, thread them through the 8dc at the bottom of the ear flap.
Then all you do is plait these threads together in a big chunky plait until they're as long as you fancy.

These hats are great stash-busters and will also keep your head nice and warm in the cold winter months!

2 comments:

yoel said...

I love this diagram. Sort of a ransom-note-cum-knitting-pattern.

Louise said...

Haha, thanks! That's the beauty of MS Paint :-)