Ma Cobb's Firefly Hat

So, it's been a while since I got around to posting on here. It's been a hell of a couple of months, let me tell you! As soon as I'd got into the swing of having a job, I lost it, so I'm back to being impoverished - but that doesn't mean I've not been busy, oh no. Not too long after that, we found out that we had to move house at short notice, which was pretty annoying since we'd just signed the new lease - landlords, I don't know - and it took us a while to find the new place. As you can imagine, crafting and blogging was rather put on a back burner, not least because all my crafty stuff was thereafter boxed up ready for the move.

Then, around three weeks ago, my stupendously awesome and wonderful Granddad passed away. One of those things that turns your life upside down. So in the middle of moving house - in fact, the very same week - I was in an entirely different county helping sort things in the house and organise the funeral and such. The Lovely Amanda and my Mr had to do all the moving themselves (which I still feel a bit guilty about).

Anyway, that's where I've been - hope it's been a bit less fraught for you lot *peers out of the screen*.

A while back I coralled all my partially done projects into a box and posted them here. The ones at the end of the list - but funnily enough with the highest priority - were a couple of sci-fi themed hats for my good friend Limlight (who has a home on Blogger here), in exchange for some of her beautiful artwork. She created two pieces for me, based on my Harry Potter fanfiction, Dreams and False Alarms: this one, of Hermione and my OC Amelia being all cousinly, and this one of Amelia, Lupin and Snape, upon whom she has something of an impact. You'll have to read it to find out what impact, of course *grins evilly*.

Right, the first of the two hats was based on the hat the formiddable Ma Cobb sends Jayne in the (amazing) sci-fi series Firefly - and if you havem't seen it, I'd highly recommend it. My Mr made himself one of these hats a few years back in slightly more muted colours (a picture can be seen in the WIP post above), and that turned out pretty well, so I knew it would be a blast. Limlight provided the pattern, which was created by Emisanboo over on Craftster, and it was really straightforward to follow.

The yarn (Alafoss Lopi), which I eventually tracked down here, initially felt quite scratchy for a hat, but it was surprisingly soft when I knitted it up. I used one skein of each of the following: Gold, Rust Red and Orange; Lopi are delightfully uninventive with their colourway naming, which was something of a relief after trying to hunt down some obscurely spelled laceweight, I can tell you. It knitted up beautifully, and showed off the stitches nicely without looking too neat - the idea being to match the rustic style of Ma Cobb. It was also fairly quick to work since the yarn was giant (well, giant considering I'm mostly using sock yarn at the moment).

The pompom proved tricky (which is why there's no image of the completed hat), mostly because pompoms are one area of craft that I have absolutely no clue about (I know they're supposed to be easy, everyone keeps telling me - I think I must have a pompom shaped mental block somewhere in my brain). Fortunately my Mr came to the rescue in flying colours - here he is, crafting said pompom and looking surprisingly gollum-like...

If you're a massive geek like me you'll love this hat - and it's such a satisfying make!

Pictures: Hat body: achieved!; Alafoss Lopi - I love this stuff!; My preciousssss pompomsssss.