Pointy Elf Hat for Holly

See the two batts of fiber in the front of this picture?  The purple and purpley-blue ones with the labels around them?

They were two batts I got from the Shepherd's Harvest Festival last May--along with the other beautiful fibers basking in the sun in that picture, but we'll get to those another time.

Here's the darker one (the one I fell in love with hard), unrolled, ready to spin:

Man, that purple and red-violet were impossible to capture on camera for me.  This fiber is even more stunning in person.  It just radiates color.  Makes me drool, honestly.  (Have I mentioned that I love color?)

Anyway, that became a really beautiful two-ply yarn.  I spun one batt, then the other, and then plied the two colors together.  It turned out really pretty, if really difficult to capture on camera.  The yarn is lumpy and bumpy and thin in some places, just like the batts.  They are made from merino and bamboo (with a little bit of sparkle thrown in) and they're not processed excessively, making chunks of one fiber and sections of another, instead of a homogenized fiber prep.  It makes for fun spinning, because you just let it do what it wants to do.

I struggled for a very long time trying to decide what to do with this yarn.  How to use it to its best advantage.

When I saw this book, More Last-Minute Knitted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson (well, the cover, specifically), I had an idea.

I'm teaching myself what different decreases do.  The amount, the rate, all that.  So I checked out the book from the library, just to look at the way she handles the decreases, then cast on for (pretty much the same hat, but using my handspun, and my own stitch count and gauge) a Pointy Elf Hat for Holly.

I love the end result, it looks so cute on her (even better in real life!), and I have quite a bit of yarn left over, so I can make something for me too!  Score!