follow the fiber, chapter three: the crocheter

are you following the fiber? just in case you need a recap, the heavenly skein of yarn you see above was passed to me from the hands of the Spinner, aka jill draper, who makes stuff and blogs. and before jill made it into yarn, the fiber began its colorful adventure in the hands of the Dyer, aka cris of into the whirled, who transformed it from natural (i.e. ‘sheep’) color, to this glorious array of hues– purples, greens and browns and all of the gorgeous shades in between– reminding me of the lilac bush outside my front door whose blooms i am dying to see for the first time.

so, for the last few weeks this fiber has been in MY hands, the Crocheter. the photo above shows the yarn as i received it: wound into a hank by jill. this is the form handspun yarn takes after being wound from the spinner’s wheel onto her niddy-noddy, then twisted and one end tucked into the other to keep it neat. in order to crochet or knit with it, one first needs to wind it into a ball.

most people who play with yarn eventually acquire a ball winder. however, since i tend toward smaller projects and like to dabble with small amounts of many different yarns (as opposed to, say, making sweaters which can require umpteen skeins of the same yarn and thus get quite tedious to wind them all by hand) i rather love hand-winding. it’s especially fun with a yarn like this one, having no color repeat, because you get a preview of every inch of that yarn as you wind it, which helps you get to ‘know’ it. to wind a ball by hand, you drape the hank around the back of a chair (to keep it from tangling) and begin wrapping it around your four fingers. i like a center-pull ball, so i leave a long tail as i start, and try to avoid wrapping over it as i go. when the ball gets large enough, slide it off your fingers and continue until it’s all wound. while winding the yarn, i get my first sense of how amazing this yarn is going to be to work with. so smooth, buttery soft, and the color progression is mesmerizing… every few inches the pairing of shades between the two plies is different.

here is the finished ball (the tail is hiding underneath). ready to begin crocheting!

i had a lot of time to think about what i would make from this special yarn. since it was only four ounces of fiber, i knew that a hat would probably be the best use of it. i would have liked to make one of my coral cloches from it, since that’s my favorite style and i thought it would show off the spectrum of colors nicely. but the ruffly coral part of that hat takes a LOT of yarn, and i suspected i might run out before it was completed, which would have been disappointing. so i opted for a bobble hat instead. this style is simple and classic, but the cluster of random bobbles gives a nice textural twist.

so i begin the hat, using tall-enough but dense-enough half-double crochet stitch, and the spiral grows and grows. what a joy this yarn is to use! it has so much energy and personality compared to any commercial yarn. you can really feel the love in it.

when crocheting in the round, i prefer to work in a spiral rather than joining each round and beginning a new one, which makes a visible seam. i love how long, slow color changes will flow uninterrupted this way. i use a piece of contrast yarn to mark where the rounds begin, and continue increasing until it is nearly the size of the top of my head.

at this point i stop increasing and work even, progressing down the sides of the hat. now i can begin adding in the bobbles, which are made of clusters of taller double- or triple-crochet stitches, joined at the top. i space them semi-randomly, one per row as i go around. in these shades of light green and violet, they remind me of grapes!

maybe because i live in a fairly cold climate, i think hats should always be long enough to cover the ears. once there seem to be enough grapes, i work a few more plain rows to finish it off. my worries of running out of yarn are unfounded and i briefly regret not attempting the coral hat, but this one is looking pretty luscious.

and before i know it, the hat is done! i love the subtly-shifting stripes, and how the no-two-inches-alike marled color combos blend so harmoniously. thinking about the three combined stages of this process and how they have culminated in this humble head covering is pretty cool, and makes me feel connected to my friends and fellow makers. six hands made this hat together! it’s been a fun, enlightening, and fulfilling journey.