I did the Fisherman’s Rib (pg 44) for a different hat, but changed my mind.  It kicked around on the needles for a week or so until I decided to do this.  The main stitch is Broken Plaid Pattern, pg 62.  The rib had 112 stitches in it and it is REALLY loose, but 112 (8 x 14) worked beautifully for the decreasing at the top.  If I were to do it again, the ribbing would have 100 stitches and then I would increase in the first pattern row to 112.

I am back on the i-cord roses from the second post on this blog with a vengeance.  Click on the link for instructions.

I get the pattern thing.  You can look at the picture and know what you are making.  I sometimes wish I could be happy with that.  It would simplify things, I would get to knit all day and most of the frustration would be gone.  I would know what it would look like before I started and I would just have to figure out who to give it to or how to sell it.  It was also easier back when I had all the Barbara Walker books and various other pattern libraries to choose from instead of just the next stitch in a chapter.  It constrains me and makes me want to hurry up and cram as many patterns per item as I can.  I knew I was going to be working with the Bavarian Block Pattern, pg 116 this time, mainly because I couldn’t figure out how to make it into something nice and I wanted to get past it, to nicer things….or at least I hope there are nicer things coming up.  I never look too far ahead because it is no use wishing if I am going to get through this.  And it looks like my obsessive streak is going to make me get through this.

I tried a couple of attempts at combinations of stitches to get rid of other “problems” at the same time…two birds with one stone and all that, but it just made it worse.  I decided in the end to make a narrower band which would go around the head horizontally.  This particular stitch cannot be done in the round, at least I am not sure that it would be the same stitch exactly if I did it in the round because you knit into the back of the stitch on the front and purl into the back of the stitch on the back.  I am not sure that knitting into the back on each round actually equates.  The ribbing on the right has a similar issue.  After I got enough to go round the head, I picked up and knit 110 stitches across one edge and modified the stitch to doing only 6 knit-into-back instead of 10 between the twist 2 cables.  I made a roll by joining back in on itself after 10 rows, then I did an 11 point decrease, loosing the 6 knit stitches first (alternately from either side), then the cables, then the rest of the stitches.  I then picked up along the other edge and did another roll and sewed the seam shut.

It may have behoved me to go to bed at this point and see what I thought in the morning, but no…it did not match my vision and I ripped the bottom roll out, leaving me with not enough yarn to finish it ANY way.

I made two attempts at a roll,the first was a twisting roll that had the twist-2 down the middle but it wasn;t working out so I took the second opton…a stuffed roll.

Heather asked for a Space Invaders hat that was rude inside and reversible.  At first I couldn’t wrap my head around doing these together, because I was stuck on the idea of the phalanx of space invaders one sees in the game. I thought I would have to split it into two hats for her, one with space invaders and one that was rude inside, so I figured out the pixelation that would fit on a hat and went with that.  I was unhappy with the middle set of invaders, they looked ok in my drawing but didn’t knit up well.  I thought the bottom and top ones looked close enough to the real thing for anyone who had played the game, but not the middle ones.  Back to the drawing board (or graph paper notepad in this case) I went and came up with better (more detailed) pixelations.

There are two distinct phalanxes, because each of the guys waves their arms and switches between two modes, so on the second hat I did each of the guys in each of their modes, plus the bonus spaceship.  You can see six of the seven invaders in the above two shots.  Below see Heather sporting her new hat…and her new tattoo peeking out from her shirt.

….and I made it rude inside as per her request… as my friend Jen said when she saw it in progress…it is totally NSFW on the inside.

Oh yeah…and for the Barbara Walker project,  I used Diagonal Wave, pg 275, above the fold, because it is the same on both sides.

This one went from concept to completion with only minor glitches.  I had to rip back a couple of rows a time or two in one section or another. I was at my brother’s birthday party with about 35 people while I was knitting this so once in a while I forgot if I was on a resting row or not and had to go back a bit.  All the stitches I used except one had a resting row in them. 

I have found over time that if you want to rip back blocks of stitches for several rows, the best approach is to re-knit them row by row, instead of stitch by stitch.  You have to put them all back on the left needle each time you do a row.  Place the loose loop corresponding to that row over the index finger of your left hand and grab the stitches to knit European style (i.e. holding the loose yarn in your left hand–look it up if you don’t already know how to do it). You  can usually grab the stitches except the last stitch, at which point things are too tight to knit that last stitch, but it is easy to fudge things on just one stitch.

When you do this you have to be careful to line up the right loop with the row you are supposed to work.  If you go back several rows, this becomes more important.

I cast on 102 stitches and did the ribbing (Zigzag Knotted Rib, pg 43) on two needles.  I changed to a round needle for the pattern stitches which were (from left) Spiral Columns, pg 121, Aran Honeycomb, pg 273, Twist Zigzag, pg 119, Bavarian Check Pattern, pg 117, Elongated Aran Honeycomb, pg 273 and Shadow Cable, pg 273—see top picture for these last two stitches.  I did each pattern twice so there were 12 vertical strips in the hat.

Oh, and how do you like them apples Nancy…7 stitches in one hat…now THAT is pattern loading… I could have done 13 stitches if I had not repeated around the hat.  But that may be overkill.  Another time, maybe.  If I get desperate.