Finished Object: Dreaming of Cornwall

 
Pattern: Dreaming of Cornwall from ela strickt
Yarn: Blacker Yarns Westcountry Tweed
Colours: natural grey and olive
Needles: 4mm and 4.5mm round needles
Start of project: November 26, 2014
End of project: November 29, 2014

On Ravelry

I was fortunate enough to get to test knit this cabled beanie hat for ela at the end of November. I ordered the original yarn she used for her hat from England and I was pleasantly surprised how fast it arrived in Zürich and how very kind and helpful the people from Blacker Yarns were.

The yarn was quite a new feeling for me. It's very much a wooly yarn, quite scratchy at first, sometimes there were even tiny twigs or grass in the yarn.The yarn is lightly spotted with little dots of colours that truly look like flowers in the middle of wild grass. At first it took some getting used to the roughness but I got into it after a while and the yarn changes a lot once it's blocked, it gets softer.

There were two new things in this pattern apart from the yarn. The first was the Italian cast on. I had never done that before and I struggled with it. I guess it would have been better to learn it with a different yarn and during the day instead of in near darkness on the sofa. I am still not sure if I did it correctly, but my ribbing looks ok now and I just could't get myself to start again (I think I started about 4 or 5 times...) The second thing I learnt was knitting with two cable needles at the same time. For the first row it felt a bit much but then I got the concept and enjoyed it.

The hat has a great fit and it's really warm and squishy now. I added a pompom at the top of it (my stylist aka my dear daughter told me it looked ok ;-)

I am very happy that I was able to be part of this test knit which is finally over today (15th of December. I've been wearing my hat every day and it's really warm and the wool gets softer each time.