Sometime last fall, I fell in love with the Patrick's Pumpkins Hat. After getting the brim done, I realized something Very Important. It would look absolutely ridiculous on me. So here I was, with orange and green yarn, and desperately yearning to make a pumpkin, but not wanting a hat that would get me laughed at.

So I seached and search, and found the perfect little pattern. It's not perfect, but I rather like it, and it'll make a perfect pincushion, which will come in handy, because I've been itching to quilt lately.



Pattern: Pumpkins
Yarn: Rowan Felted Tweed in "Ginger" and "Pickle"
Stuffing: Soft Touch Poly-fil Supreme
Needles: 3.75mm Clover Takumi Bamboo DPNs
Duration: November 11, 2006 to Feburary 16, 2007, with lots of procrastination and working on other projects

Please ignore the cigarette in the image, gentle reader. One of my neighbours has a habit of flicking them onto the barkdust near our porch.

This pattern is super quick, provided you actually work on it. If you're like me, though, you've got one heck of a case of ADD, and will constantly neglect one project for another (or fifty). The yarn is rather nice, remarkably soft, nicely tweedy while still reading as a solid. Being that it's much finer than Cascade 220, I used significantly smaller needles, to make for a petite pumpkin.

This was my first experience felting. I've never really understood the allure of felting, it seems so strange to put so much effort into something and then to turn around and erase all the details. Not that there are many details in the pumpkin, of course. I can't say that I'll be doing much in the way of felting, but it certainly has its uses.

There's still a fair amount of stitch definition left. It's remarkably difficult to tell when a piece is fully felted. Nothing like pulling a sopping wet bit of knitting out of a pillow case, with tons of lint all over it, and trying to figure out whether it's done. The seams, which form the furrows of the pumpkin, aren't quite squished in as much as they should be, I managed to forget to wrap yarn around the seams until it'd already been drying for an hour or two.

Overall, I'm happy with this little guy. I may well make more of them for the sewers and quilters in my life. At some point I'll probably mist it with some water and see if I can't get those seams to scrunch in a little more, but if not, no biggie.