Hat finished and buried. Not knitting.
As winter will never end, this will get a lot of use
The hat is finally complete! Complete and out of sight. Buried, in a box. A box in my suitcase. And why do I want the hat out of my sight for a little while? Let me recap a paragraph from yesterday’s blog post:
Secondly, I have never knit a slouchy hat, and I keep worrying at the prodigious length that this hat has reached already. I can put the hat on, draw the needle through and cinch the top, and it fits fine – but I am going to press on with the remaining one and a half repeats of the charted pattern, because I’d like to add a new shaped hat to my winter wardrobe.
Six repeats of the chart did seem to make an awfully long hat, but I liked the pictures of other people’s finished projects so much that I wanted one that fit the same. remember that little problem I had with reading the ball meterage a few days ago? I can’t read the number of chart repeats, either. As I was pulling the finishing thread through the last 11 stitches to close the top of the hat (another disaster occurred here, more of which later) I suddenly saw the phrase ‘repeat charted pattern 5 times glaring out at me. I am such a dolt. What’ more I then last 5 of those last 11 stitches slip off the needle without knowing, and unravel by about 7 rows as I pulled the final stitches shut.
I could have unravelled to the end of the fifth repeat and started knitting the decreases again, but I was too agitated and fed up by then, so I picked the stitches up, closed the top and hid it from sight.
It’s such a lovely pattern, I am angry that I screwed so many simple things up. I am hiding it away so I can forget about the frustrations in knitting it and maybe love it when I ‘discover’ it again in a few weeks. Oh, and if it weren’t for that extra pattern repeat I would have had enough yarn to have not needed the third ball of dye-lot discrepancy evil.
What is it about patterns that make reading so challenging? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve either misread something or, mmmmm, conveniently forgot what the pattern said. I also seem to have a difficult time of keeping track of my repeats. Did I do that 4 times? 5? Perhaps 7! Yikes. The challenges of knitting. Any chance you can block it on a plate and turn it into a beret? Love your blog!
Cheers-
Lisa
I have a semi-theory on this.
I think it came about because I knew that knitting this hat would be a) fun, b) easy, and therefore when you feel that a pattern is going to be both those things you relax and read the instructions with less than full concentration, because you know what you are doing. But…
I do think it would block quite nicely into a slouchy beret, but I do actually quite like the finished item. I haven’t buried it away because I don’t like the way the hat looks or feels on, but because I am angry with it for leading me into a false sense of security, and making me mis-read ball-bands, patterns and everything else. Yes, it is DEFINITELY the hat’s fault and not mine…