For the past decade or two I've had this brassy bling bling yarn, Novita Byzantine, in my stash. A true retro yarn! For the first decade or so, I had no idea what to do with the yarn. Then at some point, most likely when I was a student and short on cash, I decided to knit a sweater with the yarn. After seeing the result, the thing stayed unfinished in my stash for another decade or so. And then one morning in the subway I saw someone with a hat knitted in similar bling bling yarn! Now the only problem was that the yarn is pretty thick (77m/50g), but the fiber content doesn't make it that warm (28% mohair, 27% polyamide, 24% polyester, 14% acryl, 7% wool). I had to get some warm fibers to make the hat as warm as it looks like, so I added some alpaca and wool to the mix. I think the result is pretty cool, but I'm afraid that we are almost done with the winter here so testing in freezing temperatures will have to wait until next winter. We did get some nice wet snow for the photo shoot, though!


As I had some yarn left after knitting the hat, I decided to knit something from my knitting queue: The Wham Bam Thank You Lamb Neckwarmer by Susan Chang. For this one I combined all three yarns to get (almost) the gauge required. Of course, half way through, I ran out of the alpaca wool. As I didn't want to buy more yarn for this project I simply picked a similar weight black yarn from my stash. It's either a wool/polyamide mix or 100% wool - no clue of yarn name to be found.



These two made a nice little retroyarn stash busting project in between other things. And now I only have about 7 skeins worth of the lovely bling bling yarn left - in sweater format. Anyone in need of some bling bling? You are welcome to come and rip all you need. Take my word for it, this yarn doesn't unravel easily.



Instructions

The hat is knitted with wrong side facing you. After finishing, turn the hat to have purl side out.

Cast on 70 sts on smaller needles in Byzantine. Knit 4 rows in garter stitch. Switch to larger needles and join in the round. Knit every other row with Byzantine, every other row with Alpaca Wool and Alpaca Superlight combined.

Continue until the entire piece measures 18 cm (or desired length). Decrease 7 sts evenly. Knit 4 rows, decrease 7 sts evenly, knit 2 rows, decrease 7 sts evenly, knit 1 row. Last row: *k1, k2tog*, repeat. Break yarn, pull the yarn through sts, tighten. Sew garter stitch edge seam. Weave in the ends.