3.09.2008

Pattern: Foliage (worsted version) from knitty.com
For: me
Yarn: 1 skein Rowan Yorkshire Tweed Aran in 415 (won from the Stash and Burn One Skein contest)
Needles: US size 5 and 7 Knit Picks Options
Timeline: started 03.03.2008; finished 03.03.2008

Well, you knew if I wanted a hat and the one I'd made for myself totally didn't work out, I'd have to cast on for another, right? It helped that I had an entire Sunday to do nothing but knit and didn't want to work on Dogwood Donna because I wasn't in the mood for looking up how to do intarsia. With no internet access, I had to rely on patterns that I had on hand and had to go through my stash by hand instead of the wonderful, amazing, fantabulousness that is the stash section on Ravelry.

I've wanted to make Foliage since the pattern came out, but just never got around to it. I knew I needed to make it slouchier (See: pretty much any post regarding hats on this blog), so it sort of got pushed back in the queue as far as hat patterns went. However, I saw that Cirilia had made a snood-y version, so I figured I should just block it bigger and see what happened. After the unsuccessful blocking that occurred with Estella, I decided to add some length to it to make it bigger and then block it.

After getting about halfway through the pattern, I knew that I'd definitely have way more yarn in one skein than I'd need, so I started weighing it as I went to make sure I used up as much of it as I could. The fact that the hat is knit from the top down helped a lot! I ended up using pretty much every last bit of yarn.

I did 5 pattern repeats instead of 3 and did a picot bind-off, just because. After soaking the hat, I squeezed out the excess water and just pulled at it to open up the lace pattern and make the body of the hat bigger. I didn't want to stretch the brim out too much, so I tried to be careful there.

I know I have a big head and Nadine has a small one, but this is ridiculous!
Did it work? Pretty much. Because of the way the top of the hat is constructed (4 increase points) and the way I laid it out to dry (folded in half), it does tend to kind of fold in half, but I don't mind. I probably could have gotten away with only one pattern repeat and had it be slouchy enough, but this is also pretty fabulous. I think the brim is a bit on the loose side, so I'm toying with the idea of either reknitting it (boo) or running a bit of elastic through it. Overall, a success and I finally have a hat for myself.

Updated 03.08.2008
Because the bottom of the hat blocked out to big, I ripped back the brim, reknit on size 4s, 10 rounds of 1x1 rib, and bound off in pattern. It's almost a bit tight, but not too bad.