beanie hat - Daniel Kenneth

One of my local yarn shops is going out of business so I have been stocking up on some of those expensive specialty yarns I might not normally buy. Some of the yarns I was looking at were $70 a skein! This ombre yarn was probably half that price normally and with the going-out-of-business sale prices, I figured I could splurge to make a basic ombre knitted hat.

One thing I noticed, after my first few hats, was that they were pretty loose on my head. I’ve never really knit clothes that needed to have any specific dimensions, so I had pretty much just assumed I would get the right size if I used the right needles and the correct weight of yarn. None of this really matters when you knit a blanket or a scarf as long as you’re consistent.

I pulled out the same basic pattern from the Craftsy Cloudborn Basic Hat Kit I did a few days ago and started by checking my gauge and knitting some sample swatches (I know, I should’ve done this the first time). It took me a few tries to get it right, but it turned out I needed needles 2 sizes larger and I have to knit much more tightly. And because I was knitting tighter, I crammed a lot more rows into this project and it took a lot longer than the previous hats I made. So I’ve been knitting every night to get this done because I decided I wasn’t going to open any of my recently arrived packages of goodies until I finished this project. I’ll probably wait on those packages until this weekend when I really have time to get into them. Until then I’ll cram in some new projects with all the fun yarn I bought.

Apparently, I’ve taken up late-night shopping on my phone. All of a sudden plenty of amazon and craft company boxes started showing up. I didn’t realize how many buy buttons I clicked in the past few weeks but everything I ordered seemed to show up all at once! At least I will have plenty of things to write about. The first item I opened up was this set of pom-pom makers.

Now there are plenty of pom-pom makers out there, but this was the one marked as amazon’s choice, which means it’s inexpensive and has good ratings. Most of them look the same and they’re all made of cheap plastic, so why pay for a name brand when you can pay half price for the same thing, amirite?

I bought this because I’ve been knitting beanie hats like a mad man the past week and some of those hats are going to need a pom-pom dangling from the top. The directions are simple, just fold out the little arms and wrap each pair of arms in yarn and push the arms back in.

To be honest, I hated this part. Wrapping the arms was easy, but tedious. Then, something amazing happened. I started cutting the yarn down the center guide and the pom-pom started popping open in the most satisfying way.

It was so satisfying that now everything in the house will need a pom-pom. Good thing I’ve been saving all my scrap yarn from the million socks I’ve made!

After cutting each side, tie a piece of yarn around the center, pop open the arms again and the whole thing will fall apart to review your almost-perfect pom-pom.

Pretty good for my first try. A few little snips here and there and it’ll be a perfect little ball for my hat.

Tag: beanie hat

Basic Ombre Knitted Hat

Pom-Pom Makers