Yggdrasil

Guys! I did a pompom hat! It only took me eight years of being a knitter to get to this point. I ought to celebrate this joyous occasion. Which I will by taking a large tree inside of the tree house, putting lights in it, and hanging tons of very fragile decorations in it. Oh wait. I was doing that already.

Raveled here

I’ve wanted to make this pattern since it was published. I only got around to it last month, as a small, but more interesting knit after I’d done miles and miles of plain stockinette. Like most of Brooklyn Tweed’s patterns, this pattern only has charts and no written instructions. While I wish they’d do both, is does not put me off from making their patterns.

I used Rowan Kid Classic for this project. Kid Classic is a yarn I never used before, even though it is one of Rowan’s most popular yarns. I picked up a ball or two about a year ago, during a clearance sale, to try it out. I got just enough for a small shawl or a hat. The yarn is quite fuzzy so not the best yarn if you want clean cables, as the fuzzyness of the yarn does not make for the best stitch definition. Therefore the yarn drowns the tree motif a bit. If I where to make it again I’d probably use another yarn. All in all I’m not unhappy with the look, though.

Now lets talk about the colour! I don’t know what it is about this yarn, or this colourway, but it changes every time I look at it. Seriously. It’s not just me either, I’ve frequently mentioned it to my boyfriend, friends and innocent passerby and they all agreed (accept for the innocent passerby, he just looked at me dumbfounded…weird). The colour seems to change between dark purple, dark brown and black (okay fine, so it does stay within the darker colour segments, but isn’t that more variation than you’d expect from one ball of yarn?).

The feeling of the yarn is a bit weird though. It doesn’t feel very woolly, even though  the fibre content is largely wool. At the risk of being called a yarn snob, but knitted up if feels a bit plastic-y to me. Which is odd, because it has a whopping 8% of Polyamide (Lambswool: 70%, Kid Mohair: 22%, Polyamide: 8%). I simply cannot believe that it’s the 8% that overpowers the all the rest. Perhaps it’s simply something I have to get used to. In general I do not use a lot of yarns that have a mix of different fibres. The only ones I have used before have alpaca and wool mixed together, which to me seems different as they are both animal fibres so still somewhat related.

All in all I think the hat is quite a success. I’ve worn it loads of times already and it kept me nice and warm during this week’s stormy weather!