Trying but failing: how not to knit a hat

I predicted a few weeks ago that if I were to order from Bendigo Woollen Mills, the order would arrive before my Knit Picks order made at Christmas time. I was correct - I am still waiting for the Hawthorne Bare I need for my Japan Sleeves but four balls of Luxury 10 ply arrived on my doorstep five days after ordering them. My desire to get started on knitting some clothes can finally begin!

Unfortunately, to knit clothes that fit, one must knit gauge swatches. I hate knitting gauge swatches (which is probably why I knit so many socks and do not have a single hat that fits me properly). However, I have a lot more yarn that I need to finish the jumper, so I decided to follow the advice of the great Elizabeth Zimmermann and knit a hat as a gauge swatch. Even better, there is a hat pattern in the Home and Away pattern book: the Knitbot Simple Hat.

Perfect! I grabbed the recommended needle sizes for the jumper, cast on the number of stitches for my head size, and started knitting. I knit to the hat length recommended before doing the decreases and looked at what I had produced. It seemed a little big...

.. so I pulled out the cables and blocked it.

It's huge! I didn't check the needle size recommended in the hat pattern and it (unsurprisingly) is different for the jumper - 3.75mm and 4.5mm for the hat instead of 5.5mm and 6mm for the jumper. I had effectively knit the first 7 inches of the jumper. Grrr! So much for saving me time on knitting a gauge swatch! 

I have now cast on both the hat and the jumper with the correct size needles and learned my lesson: read the pattern properly to save both time and my sanity. Never again...

Baby Gift 1: Teeny tiny booties and a hat (2015 Fos #5 & #6)

Today's post, like the things it features within it, is bite sized. I present here the perfect Tier 2 friend baby gift.

First up, Fleegle's seamless version of Saartje's famous bootie.

So cute!

Paired with a Mandie Harrington swirl hat (88 stitches, 2.75mm needles).

This hat looked alarmingly tiny when I cast off... 

..but fortunately relaxed during blocking to look of appropriately matching size with the booties.

Took about 25g of yarn (Knit One, Crochet Too left over from a Baby Surprise Jacket) and one week relaxed knitting to get done. Paired with a lovely soft Country Road cashmere blend washable baby blanket and a nice card, this is an excellent gift for a new bub on its entry to the world. (I just hope the parents-to-be think so too!)

In with a whimper not a bang (2015 FOs #1 and #2: Swirl hat and booties)

Can you believe it's the third week of January already? For me, the year so far has felt full but remarkably, notably uneventful. 

For example, with my Christmas money I bought a huge cast-iron Dutch oven:

It's great! I used it to make seven litres of veggie stock (pictured in the saucepan) which I am using in the risotto that I also made it in. It's wonderful and I love it but really, not newsworthy (although, look how healthy and delicious my dinner is? I love eating in summer.)

I got beautiful flowers and breakfast in bed for my birthday:

I made a cute little hat and bootie set on the request of my favourite Dutch grandma (not mine but I wish she was!)

Rav links - Swirl booties and Swirl hat

My favourite thing of the entire year so far is a gift I received for Christmas:

 a 2000-piece jigsaw puzzle.

Lucy absolutely hates it. She does not understand why we are paying so much attention to it rather than to her.

She tried to join in one evening...

but her method of attempting to beat the puzzle into submission proved somewhat ineffective.

See - all very nice, remarkedly uninteresting! I'll see if I can rustle up some actual events for my next post...

2014 FO#19: Rikke Hat

Australia is headed into the hottest part of the year and it has been estimated that this particular summer is going to be a scorcher. What better time, then, but to finish a 100% woollen hat?

The pattern is the Rikke Hat from Happy Knits. It is a simple slouchy garter stitch hat knit in the round. 

This is technically Rikke Number 2, as I did knit the hat using 104 stitches as specified in the pattern. That hat was a bit big, so I reknitted it on 96 stitches and now it fits perfectly.

The yarn is Mirasol Hacho, bought six or seven years ago. It's lovely to work with and the hat is gorgeous and soft.

I suspect it's going to be super warm and useful in the winter...

..I guess I'll know in six months time when I finally need to wear it!

2014 FOs #2 & #3: Snowflake hat and bootie set

Because I love making booties more than just about anything else in the entire world, as soon as it was clear I would have wool left over from the OpArt blanket, I cast on a pair of baby socks that have been in my Ravelry queue forever.

These socks were easy, cute and used very little yarn (only 34g in total!). 

They're a bit bigger than the booties I normally make (the pattern says they're for 6 to 12-month-old babies), but I figure new mums get heaps of newborn stuff but not a lot of stuff for when the kid is older. I can say for sure that they will fit the baby at some time (hopefully winter time - these socks are very very thick and warm).

I did a short row heel but when I make these again, I'll use an afterthought heel as recommended in the pattern because I think it will look a bit more finished.

I still had a little bit of yarn left over (the case of the never-ending Bendy balls strikes again!) and so I whipped up a matching hat. It was also quick and easy - cast on 66 stitches in yellow, knit 5 rows in 1x1 rib, changed to purple, knit 1 row, increased 6 stitches following row, then continued as shown. The hat took 23 grams of yarn.

For not a lot of extra time, these little extras add a whole lot of cuteness to the package.

I hope the new parents like these as much as I do.

Honey Cowl and Amanda Hat (2013 FOs #7 and #8)

Happy weekend, everyone! I hope you had a good one. At my mother's request, we spent Mother's Day at a vodka bar where I got embarrassingly drunk after one cranberry martini - those drinks are strong! Fortunately, as can be expected of any good vodka bar, there was also a selection of excellent Russian food, all of which seemed to be deep-fried, made of potatoes and/or covered in sour cream, so I soon sobered up.

I also finally managed to drag Sam outside to take photos of a project I finished a while ago - my Honey Cowl and Amanda Hat.

I swear, I can't even recognise myself in these photos. In my head I do not look like that...is my forehead usually so pointy?

But anyway, the Honey Cowl is one of those patterns that has been knitted one million times. It is easy (just a simple four-row repeat) and is great mindless knitting. It can be worn as above, hanging unlooped...

..or looped once, for extra warmth.

My favourite way to wear it is double-looped (because I do love to be warm) but I love the cowl's versatility. It's an excellent pattern and deserves its popularity.

Now the hat, on the other hand...

Not so much. I am really lazy with hats - I never swatch or measure, just start knitting. With this hat, I did that and it was coming out huge - like, could have been worn as a jumper huge.

So I frogged it, went down three needles sizes to get stitch gauge, and started again. Only then I couldn't get row gauge, so I had to add extra rows and the hat just doesn't fit me. It sits like a pillbox on my head - tres sexy, no?

Ah, no. I am certain the hat didn't work out due to user error rather than any problem with the pattern but still - not a great finished object.

A one for two success rate is okay but, since I love the scarf so much, I'm designating the whole thing a massive success. Plus I am so very warm right now! A total win :)

My Sisyphusian spiralling scrapbusting baby hat (2013 FO# 6)

Yesterday I told you that even after finishing my very cute Blue Baby Surprise Jacket, I still had a pile of crepe yarn left. It was only 35 grams, but I was not going to put that back in the stash again! But what pattern uses odd bits of yarn that only weigh 5 - 8 grams?  I knew I had to put my thinking hat on ... Then inspiration struck! A hat was the perfect project and I knew exactly what I had to do to make it work.

I took three colours and cast on 24 stitches in each colour. 

Let's call them A, B and C, going from the left.

I then divided the stitches up for magic loop 

(all of A plus 12 of B on needle 1, 12 of B and all of C on needle 2)

Then started to knit as follows.

Round 1: Knit the A stitches with C. Knit the B stitches with A. Knit the C stitches with B.

The stitches are now are divided as follows:

all of C plus 12 of A on needle 1, 12 of A and all of B on needle 2.

Round 2: Knit the A stitches with B. Knit the C stitches with B. Knit the B stitches with A.

Every time one of the colours ran out, I closed my eyes and grabbed another ball at random out of the bag.

I continued with the spiralling pattern until the hat was as long as I thought it should be, then I cast off by decreasing every second row - I decreased every eighth stitch then every seventh then every sixth etc until I had nine stitches left, then I knitted an icord for a few centimetres.

I wish I was a better photographer because this shot does not reflect the total squee-ness of this hat! It's tiny and the rolled brim is so cute. It's pretty teeny so it should fit the same baby as the BSJ.

I suck so bad at photography! You'll have to trust me - it's very cute. It also took me about two hours to knit and used up annoying odds and ends out of my stash - I will definitely be making this hat again! The question is, can an adult get away with a fetching icord finish? Maybe not...

Oh, the cuteness!

Hot days need warm hats: 2013 FO #2

There are not many things in life nicer than the first morning of a long weekend where the weather will be delightful, nothing is planned except fun things and there's lots of time for knitting and watching movies. Seriously, it's totally the best.

I finished this project a few weeks ago but I wasn't happy with the photos and wanted to take more photos that made me look like less of a grump! But honestly, since I am such a lazy blogger if I waited for that to happen I wouldn't be sharing the hat with you until next Finish it February, so I present you with my latest seasonally appropriate FO - my smooshy alpaca hat (nothing says warm woollens more than a record-breaking heat wave! Please note this hat was modelled while I was wearing a bikini).

As I said last post, I've had a pile-on of deadlines recently. Generally when that happens I get this unstoppable urge to START ALL THE THINGS!! It's like when my deadlines feel unmanageable, knitting provides tangible proof if you just keep working at something, progress is made. Plus, searching through boxes of yarn and browsing Ravelry for the perfect pattern are really, really good methods of procrastination.

So, a few weeks ago when the START SOMETHING NOW bug hit, I pulled out all of the boxes under the bed that contain my yarn. I grabbed some books off my shelf and started matching project to wool then I had an amazing lightbulb moment - I had a hat that I started during Cast On Mania but never moved beyond the ribbing. Why not finish that off instead of starting something new?

And so I did. It took me two days of not very fast knitting to get it done. Why do I  not make hats more often - they're so fast! 

Because I am lazy, I knitted the ribbing section in the same size needle as the rest of the hat (Elizabeth Zimmermann did it like that, and if it's good enough for her it's good enough for me). I added an extra repeat of the cable section to get a longer hat - it's more of a cap as written. I omitted the icord feature because (have I mentioned it?) I'm lazy and it's a decorative rather than functional feature that I didn't think my gorgeous fawn hat needed. 

I love the way the decreases on the crown kind of swoosh the whole pattern to a close. This is a lovely hat and one I can see myself making again - but next time, with better photos taken of it.

Happy weekend!

Peppermint Lounge Hat (2012 FO #4)

Winter has descended on Melbourne, bringing with it the same set of deep personal questions it does every year - what am I doing with my life?  What am I working towards? Why do I choose to live in a city that is cold for half of the year when there are so many places closer to the equator where it's possible to get your Vitamin D from the sun instead of from a tablet? How much do I really love footy? Then, after four months of soul-searching, when I have decided to apply for a transfer to UCLA where it's warm and they get better trashy reality TV (although, of course, I will miss my 'u's), St Kilda make it to the finals and I realise that I really do love footy enough to stay in my cold and windy hometown. Every year - it's like a broken record.

In preparation for the same old cold merry-go-round (also known as seasonal change) this year I decided to start the Campaign to Keep Belinda Warm 2012 (CKBM2012) early, and a few months ago cast on for the Peppermint Lounge Hat from Knitting It Old School, a really fun book with loads of great retro patterns.  I loved how the model looked - so warm, cute and funky.

And snowflakes! Isn't it gorgeous? Except I forgot a) I hate knitting side to side b) I have a massive head and c) the snowflakes weren't included with the pattern. My hat looks more like this:

Clearly too small for my humungous noggin.  The yarn was stash yarn (yay for stashbusting!) - some really old Patons Bluebell and Bendigo Classic 5-ply.

There is either something wrong with the decreases in the pattern or the way I did them (I'd put money on it being the latter) and I ended up with non-matching miters and a white seam down the back which I'm pretty sure is not supposed to be there. However, there was absolutely no way that I was going to count back all the short annoying rows to figure out what the hell I did wrong, so I grafted that sucker up, knitted on the edging and called it a day.

I'm not sure what I'll do with the finished hat but the first Belinda-warming item of 2012 has been a mammoth fail. California is looking more attractive all the time...

2011 FO #1: No Blanket For You! Hat

Ta da! The hat for the baby who didn't get a blanket is all done.  It's super cute, and I hope the new parents like it.

A few notes on the pattern.  The pattern I used was Cabled Hat with Earflap from Adorable Knits for Tiny Tots by Zoe Mellor. I have another book of Mellor's, 50 Baby Booties to Knit, and I have the same criticism for both books.  Basically, the pattern are a lot more fiddly than they need to be.  This hat is knitted flat and then seamed up.  Some knitters prefer to knit flat, but it's just another unnecessary step that could have been avoided.  I modified it to knit in the round by casting on one stitch less, but that's my preference because if I had to seam it, there's a good chance it'd sit there until the baby was two years old waiting for me to get around to it!  The earflaps are gorgeous and the ties and pompom in a coordinating yarn are a great touch that I will use again, but there were heaps of ends to weave in, making the finishing a bit annoying.  The instructions on how to make a pompom were incredibly blacking.  The sizes of the hat, rather than being listed in approximate ages as you'd expect from a baby book, were Small Medium Large, meaning that while I was making the hat I had no idea if it was going to be the right size for a newborn or a two-year-old.  I love the finished product, but the whole process was, well fiddly and a bit annoying.

Pattern: Cabled Hat with Earflaps (Rav link)

Yarn: Less than one ball of Sirdar Double Crepe for the body of the hat, scraps of Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic 5ply in Royal Blue for the straps and the pompom.
Notes/Modifications: See above.

And before I go, have you ever seen anything cuter than this?

I thought not.