Adventures in Felting Crochet

Socks and hats are wardrobe items I have always loved. After watching several friends knit socks, I decided to try crocheting them. Very soon I had a collection of crocheted socks. Of course the next thing to try was hats. Crocheting makes a soft socking kind of hat, but if you felted it....

A pattern was purchased. 100% natural wool was purchased. I purchased both an undyed skein and two smaller blue skeins. In the course of two evenings I had quickly crocheted the undyed wool into something that resembled a large misshapen sack or as my husband said a mush-mouth hat.

Internet searches were made. Would this work? Would it really ever turn into a hat? Maybe. The search began for a form. It seems my head is roughly the same outer diameter as my small angel food cake pan. Shove a salad/dinner bowl up into it after removing the center cone to form the domed crown. Balance all of that on the center cone in a really large tupperware bowl to turn up the outside edge and I was ready! After one long hot agitation cycle in the washer I had a wet, heavy semi-hat shaped piece of felt. Rinse it in the sink, pop it over the form and let it dry. Days later I reread the directions. Ooops! I was correct in not putting in the dryer but I should have wrung it dry and rolled it in a towel before putting it on my form. Live and learn. When it finally dried the hat came out pretty well.

Now to work with the blue wool. Everything worked pretty much the same as the first time with a couple of exceptions. I remembered to take the before shot you see up above and I remembered to wring and towel roll the finished hat so it dried much faster.