I’d been saving this skein for just the right project.

When looking for a travel project to take on an international trip, I chose the Beloved Bonnet. I wanted something small for airplane knitting and this one didn’t take up a lot of space.

For the yarn, I chose my fiery En Fuego handspun (a Nest Fiber Studio colorway) that I spun in 2020. I’d been saving this skein for just the right project, and the yardage was perfect for Beloved.

Once I started knitting, I realized that the yarn is thicker than fingering in some places, because the fabric knitted up pretty densely. That is OK, because it will make the hat nice and warm. The pattern was easy and fun to knit. There’s something about knitting with my own handspun that always makes me happy, and I very much enjoyed working with the shifting textures and colors.

The Beloved Bonnet pattern comes in 5 sizes; I knitted the Adult size for a 22″ head circumference. After finishing, I tried it on several adults, and it is quite large. For some reason it didn’t occur to me that I’d want negative ease with a hat. If I make another one, I might go down a size for a snugger fit, and/or perhaps use sock yarn or something that is more consistently fingering weight.

After I took this last photo, I made some pompoms with the very last of the leftover yarn and attached the smaller ones to the ends of the tie strings for extra cuteness. I temporarily added a larger pompom to the hat peak, but didn’t like the result that much, so removed it. I really enjoyed knitting this pattern and 10/10 would make it again.