At Last

Almost a year ago now, I wrote this post in which I mentioned my desire to make this hat out of this yarn.  Even though this desire was intense, I pushed it aside in favour of Christmas knitting and didn't get around to ordering the yarn for it.  My indecision on which colours to choose (they're all so pretty!) didn't help matters either.

A couple of months later, I bought some other yarn for the hat which I thought would work well.  I decided to stick with the classic combination of white and grey since it goes with everything, but I made the bold decision to reverse the colours, making grey the main colour and white the pattern colour.  It looked really nice.

However, after I had done the ribbing of the brim (twice, since I had the wrong needle size the first time), and done a couple of inches of the body of the hat, I realized that something was wrong.  I was knitting on a 16" circular needle, and the hat was close to the same size that the needle was.  If you know me well, you know that hats that say "one size fits all" don't fit me, because my head is bigger than "all" apparently.  This is why I like making my own hats.  

(As an aside, when the Enabler and I were in Minneapolis we went to the Twins game, and I was getting really overheated so we decided to go get me an overpriced Twins baseball cap just to keep some of the sun off of my face, and I had to get one of the men's hats because the ladies hats were all too small.  Honestly, I have a giant head.  Sorry, Mom... again.)

Anyway, so you see my problem.  My head is clearly larger than 16" around, and colourwork isn't very stretchy.  There was no way that it was going to be able to stretch enough to accommodate this bowling ball that I carry around on my shoulders.  So I stopped knitting it.

I still liked the yarn, so I briefly considered trying to do math and figure out how I could make the yarn work for the hat by measuring my gauge, comparing it to the gauge in the pattern, and then adding the appropriate number of repeats.  I even took the needle out of the hat and put the brim on my head to see how close it was to the right size, and confirmed that my head is not the size of a toddler's.  I got the brim on but just barely, and it would definitely have been much tighter than the slouchy beret style hat I so desired.  So I shoved the yarn and the partial toddler hat into a bag and forgot about it, until I eventually found it and put it out of its misery.

Some months later, the Enabler ended up travelling to Seattle on business.  Before he left he found out that there is a yarn store that sells Brooklyn Tweed yarns a mere 30 minute ferry ride away from downtown Seattle.  After I stopped jumping up and down with glee, I set to giving him my order for which colours I wanted.  I still couldn't decide exactly which I wanted to make the hat with so I ended up choosing a few different ones, thinking I could decide once I got them.  I've gotta say, the Enabler did not disappoint.  He even surprised me with a few extra things, just because.

Left to right: Hayloft, Meteorite, Faded Quilt, Button Jar, and Snowbound

Once I had the yarn in front of me, I settled on Snowbound for the main colour, and Button Jar for the contrast colour; and when I finally cast on for the hat, I knew it was right.  This yarn is everything that I hoped it would be, and this hat is even more than I hoped it would be.  It's not finished yet, but I'm getting close.  The cold weather that hit recently is spurring me on.  Even though it's so close to being done, I couldn't wait to write about it because it's just so lovely.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go listen to Etta James and knit my long-awaited perfect hat.