I met up with a friend over coffee a little bit ago, and she had brought a handspun Hipstamatic to show me! It was sooooo gorgeous, that I had to try it myself. She had been ecstatic to tell me that it had taken her about 2 days to make all together. From then on, I became obsessed with the idea of handspinning and knitting my own bulky weight yarn and knitting up yet another Hipstamatic.
I haven't been able to spin a consistent bulky weight ply... well, ever, but I really wasn't concerned for consistency for this project. I wanted fun and funky, and so thick and thin was exactly what I was looking for! I spun up each single in 1 day each (allowing them to rest overnight before plying).
I used the super easy method of winding each ply onto a toilet paper core, then plying off of those. As you can see, I misjudged things, and I had a good amount more of one ply leftover, so I ended up Andean plying the remaining amount. This took one more day, and then I let it rest overnight, as well, before washing and thwacking.
I wish I had a decent picture of the yarn itself prior to knitting up, but I can't seem to find the pics I took of it. The final yarn was so fun and still extremely thick and thin! I had roughly 70yds, which I knit up exactly as the pattern called for. The knitting I did over the course of a day, idly knitting off and on all day. So, all the work of making this hat took about four days, but I did end up taking about a week off between spinning the yarn, and actually knitting it up.
What you see in that picture is actually every last bit of yarn I spun up. The hat is pretty much a beanie size for me, and super soft and comfy. And sparkly. So sparkly! I'm a bit surprised that I didn't focus on the sparkly part this entire post. ;o) I will try to get a modeled shot soon!
A few details: fiber came in the form of a lightly processed batt (fibers were aligned, but I would probably guess they were only run through once, and the fibers were super sticky, like the lanolin hadn't been washed out completely, and had aged mildly). The fiber content claims to have been a bit over 2oz of merino and angelina. My coworker thinks it looks like Elsa, and I've decided that I like that. :o)