bloom

I've heard a bit about this phenomenon called "blooming," where coned yarn gets a bath and fluffs up into a very different fiber than it was before, but I've never seen it up close, until now. The whole time I was knitting the shark hat, I felt like the fabric was too loose, too holey, and that maybe I should have gone down a couple of needle sizes. Or maybe all it needed was to bloom.

Suspecting that this might be the case, I gave the shark hat a warm sudsy soak and a few rinses the other night, then laid it out to dry. The results were significant enough that we decided entirely new pics were in order to send to Allie, the designer of this hat, for its Ravelry page. Leah happily agreed to model during yesterday's snowstorm.

Here's a before picture of the fabric, close up.

And here's an after shot. You can see how much thicker the yarn is and how much more dense the resulting fabric is. What you can't see is how much softer and more pleasing it feels.

Which is a good thing because this hat has become the headwarmer of choice for one silly bald beadmaker/baker/fisherman guy. :-)