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A Tale of Two Hats

Posted on | March 19, 2010 | 4 Comments

Well, this is really supposed to be the tale of one hat, but double the hats are more fun right?

When I started my collection, I had a pretty solid 4 patterns sketched up with 2 others that might work. Well, everything got turned around as I started knitting and projects started to morph into other ideas. For example, Lillian’s Mitts were born from Lillian due to some yarn that needed to be used up. Beulah’s Mitts also inspired another project. Yes, you guessed it, a hat.

Beulah preview of pattern number 6 in neoknits volume one

I really loved the pattern that I had chosen and tweaked a bit for the mitts and thought it would make a lovely beret. After fighting with the math for days (man it’s tough when you have specific rules to follow and you can’t cheat!), I finally got it down and cast on. The stitch pattern looked lovely and all the slices came together just perfectly at the final decrease. I bound off the final stitch last week, blocked it out, let it dry, and I was defeated. It was huge! Every see one of those hats that holds your dreads inside? Yeah, I wasn’t happy.

But wait, maybe it was just because I have a smallish head and it just overwhelmed me a little. When the pattern is written up, I would make this the largest size. There was no need to rip until I could try it on some knitter friends who have an appropriately sized head. When knit night rolled around, the hat was passed around the table, and it actually looked ok. Whew! No ripping! In the meantime I was bent on getting a second hat knit that did fit my head properly. I spend so much time knitting my samples, I like be able to use them too.

So I started hat number 2. My yarn ball was already on the light side, so I decided to cast on 2 less repeats and leave out quite a few rows. As I approached the decreases I was really nervous. That ball of yarn was pretty see through! As I started to decrease, only then did I notice I left one extra repeat out that was supposed to be there! Out it came. I’m usually a little more careful with counting stitches, but I just wanted it done. Now I was a woman on a mission who was tired and cranky. I took the high road and left it until morning.

I spent my entire weekend re-knitting the hat and got it done in record time. I bound off the final stitch and put it on my head. Then I laughed. It fit, but I was totally in self denial the whole time that this would actually be a beret. Because I didn’t have much yarn left, I didn’t have much choice in making the hat much smaller, so now I had a tighter fitting cloche. It’s cute, and it fits, but it just wasn’t a beret.

Cloche style version

So I did what any dissatisfied designer would do. I ripped out the finished beret. Before you gasp, there wasn’t too much carnage. I just had to take it down to 3 repeats instead of 4, so most of the body stayed intact. I finished re-knitting the beret on Tuesday night and I have to say that I’m finally satisfied!

So Beulah will be the final pattern in the collection, but because the cloche style hat is cute too, it will actually be written up both ways: beret and cloche. In a way, you’re kinda getting 7 patterns instead of 6. I’ll be taking the photos this weekend, finishing up the pattern and it should be available sometime next week.

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