Adventures In Pom Poms

I finished my Baa-ble hat re-knit and I'm Much Happier with everything about it.  Yes, Stella, it does always hurt way less to frog (rip it rip it) something than to live with it not exactly the way you want :-).

  

Other than not doing such a sloppy job knitting it to begin with, I did make one modification to the pattern.  I took out two rows of the night sky so it would be just a little shorter since I couldn't get the correct row/height gauge.  It fits perfect now.  

I was torn on putting a pom pom on the top or figuring out some sort of i-cord topper.  I don't really think of myself as a pom pom sort of person, but I couldn't help at least giving it a try.  Why? Because a night sky should have a full moon (even though on a full moon night, the stars don't really show up ;-).

I picked up a Clover Pom Pom maker over the weekend.  I wasn't sure how much yarn I'd need to make a large pom pom, so I made a test one and determined 40 yards would give me plenty, with some room to spare and then I got out the dye pot.  

My first attempt was way too bright/dark yellow, so I tried again.  I've had trouble getting my yellows dark enough in the past.  Now when I wanted it pale...yeah, the second one was better, but still too yellow as well.  Using one strand of yellow mixed with one strand of white worked perfect.

Here is my pom pom in progress.  Note the second pom pom maker in the background.  I got two so there'd be an extra one to give as a prize for the Meridian Jacobs/Punkin's Patch knitalong.  Yep, there are prizes (on top of ending up with a super cute hat :-)!

So you wrap around the two half circle arms, close the circle, cut up the middles and then slide a tie yarn down through the two halves, tie it off, carefully open the arms...

Okay, so I'm not the best pom pom maker in the world...yet ;-).  I trimmed (and trimmed) it up while the hat was soaking.  The hat bloomed quite a bit once it hit the water, so I decided to see if the pom pom would as well.  Bingo!  Of course I forgot to take pictures...

...so I pulled out my test pom pom (that I thought was not very good), trimmed it up a little more and dunked it in the warm, slightly soapy water.

Hey, it's not so bad after all!  Keep in mind this is 100% wool.  It might not be such a great idea to do that if you are using some other sort of fiber.  I don't know though and probably won't ever find out . Why?  Because I'm a Wool Girl ;-).

The finished hat.  Very cute, if I say so myself, even with the temporary blue stitching to hold the brim exactly where I want it (have I mentioned that I love block wool ;-).  

I can't wait until Wednesday to start another one!