January 26, 2008

Double secret no more

I finally finished Megan’s hat! By my calculations, this is the first object I have finished since November. Note to self: finish shit more often. It feels good.

I had some trouble with this one. I have trouble with hat sizing in general, blessed as I am with a head that could be charitably described as "on the large side." So when I try to knit hats for other people, I shoot vaguely for a “too small for me” size. Turns out “too small for me” includes everything from a regular men’s or women’s size hat to a hat suitable for a child of 8 or 9 years.

Guess which size hat I knit – in its entirety – the first time? Yeah, I knit the whole wee hat, then frogged it back to the brim.

When I finally reknit it in a more grown-up circumference, the hat was about 2 inches too long. So I ripped out half of it and started the decreases earlier. Since I’ve now knit this hat 2.5 times, I really feel like it should be a whole lot fancier.

But here it is in all its tweedy simplicity.

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Thankfully, I did find a perfect button at the Bazaar Bizarre to gussy it up a little bit. Mmmm, sparkly.

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Pattern: Inspired by a hat in Rowan 38, but actual pattern made up to suit my yarn, budget and desire not to seam things.

Yarn: Queensland Kathmandu DK, about 1.5 balls, held doubled, though hard to tell, as I ripped and reknit so many times that I mostly have scraps and tiny balls leftover. Heh. Tiny balls. Heh.

Needles: Blue ones? Maybe red ones.

Thoughts: next time, I will knit something from a pattern when I want to give Christmas gifts in a timely fashion. If I reknit something similar, I would also slip the first stitch on every other row to make picking up stitches around the brim strip a bit tidier.

Because I’m a blogger (and not a very good friend), I made Megan try on the hat on Tuesday, but she won’t actually get it until tomorrow. So I could take pictures of it in decent lighting today.

The very spirit of generosity, I am.

4 comments:

Kristy said...

Cute hat! I do love that tweed :) And the button you chose is great!

Siercia said...

Oh, that is a great hat. I love the button - so unusual!

(I have the same hat problem. My head is ginormous, so knitting hats for anyone else is aways fraught with worry about fit and comfort.

Macoco said...

The button really pulls the whole thing together quite nicely. Go you with all your mad hat designing skills!

Karen said...

I think it's beautiful, and the button was the perfect finishing touch! Don't worry about the rips and re-dos. Just think of all you've learned. :)