Knitted Felted Hat

Betsy started felting to help her quit smoking. This new habit quickly became an obsession, as we'll see when she makes us one of her hip and artsy felted hats.

Materials:

100g ball of Crystal Palace Yarn's "Iceland" #1015 "new snow" 100% merino wool (or any 100% wool)
16" size 13 circular knitting needles (Crystal Palace bamboo needles)
8" size 13 double-pointed needles
red, black and blue chunks of unspun fiber, 100% New Zealand wool (or any 100% wool)
Ashford's felting needle
plastic foam
dishwashing soap
plastic zippered bag
hot water

1. Knit the hat, using 100 percent merino wool and big needles to knit a ridiculously oversized hat (figure A).

2. Felt the hat.

If you look at wool under a microscope, it looks just like human hair: a shaft of overlapping scales. When submerged in warm water, those scales pull away from the shaft and start to slip around. Add a little soap, and the scales really move (figure B). Add some agitation, and the scales start to get crinkly and attach to their neighbors. That's when wool begins to felt. It shrinks, becomes more dense and less flexible. The simplest method for this is to get the hat wet and toss it into a zippered plastic bag with some hand soap. Then rub it around for 20 minutes (figure C) or until you start to see some felting action. Take it out every once in awhile and try it on. You can adjust the shape and size of the hat quite a bit through felting.

3. Let it dry overnight.

4. Embellish it! Using a felting needle or felting punch, add decoration to the hat (figure D). (A felting needle is a long sharp needle with tiny barbs along the sides.) As you jab through the wool, the barbs catch the scales and pull them with their neighbors; it's the same felting process as the water plus soap plus agitation process, just a different (higher precision) tool. For this step, take the plain white hat and basically draw a design on freehand using unspun fiber and the felting needle. It takes about 10 minutes. Pigtail holes and beads can be added as an additional embellishment.

Website: www.shizknits.com