Making Four Into One

I saw a little baby hat pattern on the Ravelry Unravellers group a while ago and got an urge to make it recently. I considered my stash and decided to make it with some pale blue cashmere I have.

I dyed the sleeves from this sweater red, but I still had plenty of blue left. But it was very, very thin, even for a pattern calling for two strands of lace weight.

So I decided to ply a few strands together to get a thicker yarn.

Yes, I could have just held the strands together and knit with them that way. I often do. But I didn't want to in this case and considering I'm the only one in charge of my knitting, I do what I want. So after making a centre-pull ball from one of the hanks, I pulled the strand from the centre and the strand from the outside and twisted them together onto the drop spindle.

I did the calculations and thought 16 grams would finish the hat, so that's what I spun. (Or plied. I don't know if you're allowed to use the word "spin" when you're just plying.) Once I had two strands twisted together on the spindle, I wound it onto my niddy noddy (pictured above) and then wound the hank into a centre-pull ball.

Then I took the strand from the centre and the strand from the outside and twisted them together in the opposite direction. That way the twist stays put. I soaked it and let it dry and I had this:

It looked ok to me but as I worked with it, it seemed too loosely spun. I'm basing this on the fact that it would untwist as it ran through my fingers as I was knitting. I don't know for sure.

But it was still very enjoyable to knit with. The design has yarn-overs which often leave exposed yarn not caught up in a stitch and it looks better to be spun than individual strands.

I got close to finishing the hat, but I did run out of yarn. So I got out the drop spindle and did another 9 grams.

As I worked on it, I thought I gave it more twist than the first one (although I didn't want to make it too different) but it looks about the same in the picture. I'll see if there's any difference as I knit with it.

And here's a little look at the cap:

It's very sweet and I can't wait to get to the interesting edge stitch. I hope mine works up as well as the one in the pattern pictures!