Knitting: mountain stream hat and mitts.

I was planning on using my mountain stream handspun for a hat, so I did. I ended up having a lot leftover, so I decided to make a pair of mitts to match. I was so paranoid about running out, but I lengthened the mitts and still had a bit leftover. I'm really amazed at just how far this one skein of handspun went. :)

The hat is from this pattern. Even though it's a slouchy hat, I had originally planned on wearing it pulled down on my head. Looking at the pictures, though, I think it looks better worn further back. I see people wearing hats like this all the time, and this is my question: how do you keep it from falling off your head? It feels like it'll just slip off, and not because it's too small (or too big). I thought about trying to sneak in some bobby pins to hold in place, but I'm not sure if that will work. Anyway, it isn't the most flattering hat ever, but I still like it and I love how the fractal spinning striped the yarn.

I love the mitts. :) They're similar enough to each other and to the hat for it to be obvious that they're a set, but without being too perfectly matched. As mentioned, I made them a little longer at the wrist (to avoid that long arms/short sleeves problem I tend to have with coats) and a little shorter at the knuckles. I would have made them even longer if I hadn't been worried about running out of yarn. The pattern is perfect if you have leftover fingering weight yarn, like 150-175 yards.

This yarn pleasantly surprised me all through the creative process, from how pretty it spun up to how far the 398-ish yards went in knitting. And it was also a great introduction to the wonders of fractal spinning, which I'll definitely be trying again soon.

As usual, more info on my project pages: hat and mitts.