I’ve purchased a couple of textiles lately that I’ve wanted to complement with work of my own. The first piece was an Icelandic sweater, purchased in Húsavík, Iceland from Kaðlín Handverkshús (House of Arts and Handcrafts). Rose made my lovely sweater of undyed Icelandic wool, and I wanted a scarf and hat to match.

I ordered some “vintage” Icelandic yarn from eBay to match, which took a couple of attempts. I ended up with a brown, perhaps fingering, single-ply. Unsurprisingly, it’s not very strong. The weft is almost all this yarn, and the warp is mostly a merino blend I had on hand. The few brown warps failed at a rate of about 20%. There are knots, but not easily seen.

I lost a ton of length and a fair amount of width, even with a careful gentle wet finish. I wasn’t sure about twisting the fringe before washing because of the different fibers. That was truly a mess, but I successfully detangled and twisted the fringe after it dried. I did add in some more of the brown Icelandic yarn when I did the hemstitching before I took it off the loom.

Then, I wanted a hat. This is nålbinding with Oslo stitch, made with a two-ply of mostly merino and a little cashmere, with one ply much heavier than the other. I followed some guidelines on shaping a hat, which was mostly successful. It works great on, though I now I think it’s perhaps a little tighter on my head than I like. I should say that started with a different yarn and made most of another hat before abandoning it – the color wasn’t right, and the shaping was worse.

At about the same time, I bought a cowl I had been coveting from Makwa Studio. Maggie Thompson (Fond du Lac Ojibwe) is a Minneapolis textile artist I have admired for years. Makwa Studio is her knitwear line, and she does other fine textile art, including beadwork. She posted that her wool yarn supplier was closing, and I have been wanting her Backbone Cowl, and I wanted these original colors.

It is a beautiful cowl, and I wanted to nålbind a hat for it. This is Icelandic wool I had on hand, again in Oslo stitch. It’s better shaped than the cream merino hat above, and I took notes this time to help the next time I want to make a hat. For my next nålbinding project, I think I will try a new stitch.