What with all that cake baking and all, one would think that Our Gal Wiseheart has perhaps switched from the fibre arts to cookery.
Not so:
It’s a hat! Or at least, it’s a pre-hat. The pattern is Fake Isle Hat by Amy King (Our Lady of the Spunky Eclectic online shoppe extraordinaire); the black yarn is Dream in Color Classy; and the coloured yarn is Noro Silk Garden.
Noro is one of those yarns that seems to pop up in every knitter’s Ravelry queue–but my confession is that I’m a first-time Noro knitter. A few rounds into this hat, and I fell in love. The yarn is so soft it flows through my fingers, and the colour changes enchant me with each new round. The Silk Garden label says there’s a bit of mohair in it, and I’m normally allergic to mohair in an ugly, eyes-become-large-red-pulsing-vegetables sort of way. But so far, no adverse reactions, not even itchy fingers, so if I hadn’t read the label, I would never have known mohair was in there.
As for Dream in Color: Just do it, baby. It’s a great yarn, comes in several weights, it’s soft as you could want, and the colors are, well, um….dreamy. (Sorry. Had to be said.)
Anyhoo, back to the pre-hat. It was going along rather well, IMNSHO. As I say, the colours were a continual delight as they shifted and changed; and once I got started with the actual stranded knitting section, I didn’t want to stop. I just flitted along, one colour to the next, black in one hand (left), Noro in the other, doing my favourite two-handed knitting trick, whilst watching a bad Bruce Willis movie on TV. (16 Blocks. Car crashes and explosions and big guns, oh my. And Brucie Boy in a mustache, looking really old and terrible, which was great for his washed-up-cop persona, but bad for my Bruce Willis As Hunky Hero lust. Ah, well.)
Somewhere near the top of the pre-hat, I figured I ought to have a little try-on session with the intended wearer–Sir Nicholas, he of the constantly cold head.
In the name of dignity, there are no photos of that try-on session. To make the point, though, here is Nicholas’s favourite hat, complete with moth hole:
It’s a double-layered store-bought hat, but it’s seen better days, and besides: It’s ugly. Nicholas is the husband of a knitter. He deserves better. Thus, I promised him a hat and sat him down with the Ravelry pattern database for a while to let him choose something he liked. (I think he chose rather well.) Then, we were off to Lettuce Knit where he picked out the yarn himself, spreading out at least a dozen balls of Noro on the floor, considering the exact colour variations of each before selecting The One.
During his careful deliberations, an extra ball of Noro might have snuck into the final purchase pile somehow. And enough Dream in Color might have been purchased for two hats. (Such a cute couple we’ll make, walking hand in hand in the snow…with matching hats. I may have finally gone ’round the bend in my winter preparations–what say you?)
But I digress. (As usual.) Here’s the gorgeous and beautifully knit Pre-Hat laid on top of the well-fitting but deteriorating Old Hat:
Conclusion: Gorgeous Pre-Hat toooooo small. Yes, I swatched. Yes, I did math. Yes, I even did a swatch in the round and tried it on his bloody large completely adorable head.
After a bit of muttering and snuffling around in my notebook, I realized that my stranded colourwork pulls in…a lot. Did I swatch the stranded part? No.
Foiled again by Not Swatching Properly.
Practice what you preach, Sandi baby.
With heavy heart, I set about measuring the gauge of the stranded section, scratching careful calculations in the aforementioned notebook, and then, sadly, I documented the beautiful colourwork (including the lack of a proper jogless jog, oh well):
The lovely floats on the inside:
And took a final shot of all those flowing, glowing floats:
And then I brought in the frogs.
We’re now on Pre-Hat, v 2.0.
I’m sure it will fit this time.
