Pin Loom Hat from Noro Wool

 Last December, a friend sent me a box of yarn that she'd bought about a decade ago, thinking she might learn to knit or crochet. I did teach her to crochet years ago, but somehow, she did not become obsessed with yarn. This is difficult for me to understand 😉😃, but we can't all be in love with the same things. She has her own creative interests. She was tired of having the yarn in her house, so sent it on its way across a continent and an ocean, arriving just a couple of days before we came here to look at this apartment. It was packed again in short order and when I unpacked it again, I added it to the rest of the yarn collection. The box contained a mix of yarns--novelty ribbon and eyelash yarns, as well as some wool and blends of wool, mohair, and other fibres. There was a ball of Noro wool in there. Noro is known for the colours of the various yarns, mostly with long colour changes and lots of colour in a ball (although there are more muted colourways). It is gorgeous yarn and this ball was in my kind of colours--cool jewel tones. I thought when I first saw it that I would make a hat out of it, but wasn't sure how I would do it. I knew from past experience that both knitting and crocheting would require the use of some scraps with the ball of Noro to eke out a hat. I let it sit in the collection and let the ideas percolate. Then Bill got me a pin loom and I started playing with that. It seemed perfect for the Noro wool. I thought weaving would be a great way to allow the colours to shine and it would allow me to get more mileage from the yarn, as the weaving uses less than knitting or crochet. I wasn't sure how many squares I would get from the ball, but decided to just start making squares, see how many I ended up with, and take it from there. I ended up with 13 squares and I might have enough left for one more (I kept some yarn back in case I needed it to sew up or crochet a border or something). 

I needed to put a bit of a border on each square, just to get the circumference right, so I rummaged round and came up with some scrap balls of some very dark blue laceweight yarn I'd gotten a few years ago at a charity shop, which I doubled up. I experimented with crochet stitches of different heights, measuring after each and doing some calculations before going with one round of double crochet, which was perfect. I like the effect of the dark frame around each square, which makes the colours pop even more. 

I left long tails when starting and ending the border rounds, and I used those to sew the squares together, which I did in the order in which the yarn came off the ball. I sewed 5 together into a tube and then sewed 5 more to each other and the first set. I didn't need any more height and considered cinching the top together by weaving some yarn through and pulling closed but I decided to crochet around the top, decreasing quickly, instead. Finally, I crocheted around the bottom using single crochet, chain one around. This pulled the bottom in just the right amount. I don't want my hats to be really tight, but if they're too loose, they slide around and are not very useful in wind. 

So that's my hat--all squares from the same ball of yarn. The colours take my breath away--I just love them. I'm looking forward to cooler weather when I can wear it. It's a lightweight hat, so good for chilly days that are not too cold. We wear hats all the time, so we each have a collection of hats and something to suit whatever conditions arise!

And now, I'm off to make a cup of tea and to cut a couple of pieces from the loaf of wholemeal raisin bread that is fresh out of the bread maker.It smells so good in here at the moment--it's a rainy, windy day as Storm Francis moves through, so the smell of freshly baked bread seems like a perfect.accompaniment to my kind of day 🍞😋

I hope you are well and staying safe!

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