This is definitely an ugh. I thought it would be really nice to knit up some leftovers from the Lizard ridge blanket into a really cool hat for a really cool friend of mine.

I must admit, I had a slightly bad feeling from the start. I couldn’t tell if I loved the pattern or hated it - a bad start indeed. And then it turned out extremely large. Too big for my large head, let alone Melissandre’s petite and delicate cranium.

So I thought, that’s OK - felting will save the day. That’s right, felting with a 45% silk yarn… You may have guessed I had never felted, or to be accurate, ‘fulled’ before. But heck, my mum teaches textiles, so I must have intuited something after all these years? Well heck no, of course.

All I can say -
Don’t do it.
It was much better looking before it saw the washing machine which stretched the silk fibres out to the max. Happier before the bath of boiling water and the scrubbing manipulation with detergent that my ever so keen mum helped me out with. She travelled continents for this visit! Then my mother tried to save it further (!) with a bit of smocking…. omg.

It was all worth it for the tears and gales of laughter when we took these photos.

Ugh - I am sorry Melissandre. I wish I had a lovely gift for you to match your own sweet lovelinesss, maybe some other time… Hey, at least it was a quick knit, so the suffering is not immense. Nothing like the really horrible fairisle jumper my dear mother spent a year labouring over…