The Problem Solved.

We had a pretty big snowfall the other night, and when my son aka, my landlord and owner of the house I live in,  came home late from work, he had to pull out the snowblower and get to work.  He is rarely required to stay late at work in this job, but this one one of those very rare times and by the time he got home around 8 p.m., the overnight cold was rolling in.  He came in after about 10 minutes with frozen hands.  

He wears this skinny little toque and no scarf and these gloves that are for industrial wear, but are not really for warmth and it irritates me because I could so easily fix it. Up until now, he has always said no.  If someone says no, I take them at their word.  You cannot make someone wear something sensible so I no longer waste my time.  

Catching him like that, with his hands frozen and his ears cold, he said maybe.  So I am taking that as a golden opportunity and am going to make it better.  A decent hat and proper wool mittens are under way.     

There is only one kind of yarn that I would use for a severe weather hat, though there might be dozens of others that would certainly make fine hats.  I am digging in to the stash to pull out the Custom Woollen Mills Mulespinner Two ply.  There just is nothing warmer for a prairie winter.  I have no idea if it is because the fibre they use comes from local sheep, grown here, where a season of hard cold is a given or, as I suspect, from the way they card and spin the fibre. The vintage machinery they use means you end up with this warm yarn that is as close to handspun as possible and has a singular sort of density without being heavy or stiff.

Though I may also need to pull out the brown yarn I have from PEI as well.  MaCausland's yarn has some of the same qualities and though they have a very different winter, when they make a yarn, they are making it with an eye to the sea.  In some ways that sea humid air is colder than our intense dry cold.  It is thick and sturdy and should make wonderful warm mittens.       

Time to dig out some dpns and Ann Budd's Knitter's Handy Book of pattern book and as soon as the yarn choice is made, I am set.