Last week I posted about the 100 Beanie Drive charity action and promised to myself (and all of you, too) that I'd make a beanie or a few.
So I read the advice given on the site on what kinds of hats or materials are best, and dug deep into my stash. To find very little suitable yarns for these beanies. See, somehow my stash has become very wool-laden, and the advice is to use cotton or acrylics for chemo hats. Finally I only found two balls of suitable yarn - Novita Hanko, a cotton/acrylic blend in natural tones and bulky weight. The yarn is made with recycled cotton fiber, which makes it really really soft.
I decided to knit the Boyfriend Hat with it. As my hand is loose and the yarn is a bit bulkier than the one used in the pattern, I cast on 90 stitches instead of 100. Well, after a few inches I realized something was seriously wrong and pulled out the needle. Well, the hat would have fit a watermelon rather than a human head had I finished it!
So I cast on again with 65 stitches, and now it's looking like a hat and not a size S sweater.
The yarn is really nice to work with, but boy did it pill after I ripped it and started reknitting! I guess that's the recycled fiber content there - the fibers are not especially long anymore so once set loose by ripping they love to fly all over the place. You should have seen me in my black t-shirt after the ripping was done!
So the plan is to finish this one and make another one in white. If I am then able to swap or otherwise get my hands on soft, acrylic yarns I'll make one or two hats more. Then they're off to Australia!
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