My Hat

This morning was a morning of waiting. Waiting for the electrician. Waiting for the bobcat. Waiting for the hot-tub and people to move the hot tub. I am not good at waiting for people, as I just pace and keep checking out the window and don't really get anything done at all. I needed something mindless to work on, so ... I took some yarn from my 'tag fibre' stash, and a beautiful skein of cream alpaca and made myself a hat. In between going to the window to check for people.

 

I used the green Knifty Knitter loom (2nd largest) and the Twisted Knit stitch (e-wrap) throughout. I WANTED the brim to roll. The brim was made using 2 strands of the cream, and then I switched to one strand of each of the three yarns held together as one.

 

Notice anything different about this hat? The front (shown on the right side of the photo) is higher than the back.  !!  I am very pleased with myself for figuring this out because the hat fits my head much better this way. 

The loom has 36 pegs, so I marked the front 12 pegs with masking tape on the loom base. I ewrapped the first 12 pegs, and also the marked 12 -- but DID NOT CONTINUE wrapping the final 12 stitches. So 24 pegs had 2 loops and 12 had one loop. I then worked the marked 12 stitches as a short row and knit off the 2nd set of loops on those 12 stitches, ewrapped them again, knit off and ewrapped them a final time but continued wrapping right to the end of the row. All 36 pegs had 2 loops, which were then knit off. But I was able to sneak in that 2nd short row of stitches at the front of the hat. (Patting myself on the back here).  I did this 4 times throughout the knitting and was able to build up the front that way.

Next, I used Kristen's (from Goodknit Kisses) technique of decreasing at the crown so there wasn't so much bulk when I did the gathered cast off. This wasn't the first time I decreased at the crown but it was the first time of using Kristen's technique and I really like it! (Thanks Kristen!!)  See? No bulk!

I could have used this hat last night when we took the dogs out to do their business. I'll be ready tonight! And the electrician came (not at 8am, but at 11:30am). The bobcat arrived 10 minutes before the hot-tub, and got situated where he needed to be. The crew moved the hot tub from the street all the way into the back yard (I actually took some video's with my phone - it was quite the process moving it through the trees) and the bobcat used forks to get the hot tub-up on the deck.  'Slick as a Whistle'. 

Once the electrician is done, they will come and fill the tub with water, make sure it all works ok and then we can tick THAT off the list. Waa Hoo!  Now that I'm done waiting for people, I've got some housework to do. It's probably a good thing I'm out at our cabin today as I LOVE the new sketch at the Clean And Simple Stamping Blog and I'd much rather be in my studio playing.  :-)

Thanks for stopping by today!