...needed its own blog post.
It all started about a year ago. The request was for a knitted hat for Christmas 2013. I had a whole year to knit it. Easy, right?
My trouble started with trying to figure out what to knit. There are so many hat patterns out there. I just went into Ravelry's pattern search and typed in "hat". There are over 33,000 hits. Over 12,000 free patterns. And in my personal library, there are 243 patterns. (And that's when I limit it to knit hats. I crochet, too.)
Where does one begin?
First, I tried this pattern...
...Not bad. But the brim was too tight. And I didn't think it was quite right. So, I started again with a different pattern...
...which regular readers of the blog have seen before as the "Homeless Hat". It's a nice hat, but it wasn't her.
Designing a hat isn't hard. I thought I might try my hand at it. But I didn't like the results...
(This isn't quite hat-sized. I realized it wasn't going to work and stopped knitting before it was long enough to be worn as a hat.)
Then I found the Hallgrim Hat pattern. I made a gauge swatch. I was using a different weight yarn, so some math was required to figure out how to modify the pattern so that was hat-sized. I thought I had it...
...only to find that this hat was too small. Way too small. (It'll fit an 8-year-old girl.)
But, with that info in hand, I was able to tweak the pattern a bit more to get the hat in the first picture. Success! And it even fits!
Lesson: If I'm given a year to knit a hat, I'll take a year to knit a hat. Or five.
I love the pattern on that first (and last) hat. It's so cool!
ReplyDeleteI like the pattern too - very cool!
ReplyDeleteLovely hat, and the color is gorgeous too. I'm a huge hat aficionado despite a tendency towards hat hair.
ReplyDeleteVR Barkowski
Wow. You've knitted a lot! Too bad that one hat didn't work. I like the color and the pattern.
ReplyDelete