I was sick of looking at the Cathedral Pattern, pg 285 and The Anchor, pg 288 and wondering WTF am I going to do with these sow’s ears. No offence, Barbara. Fifty years ago, I could see a lovely little boys sweater with the anchor smack dab in the middle, so I know exactly why it was included in the book, but it was still weighing me down. The reason for the Cathedral pattern, on the other hand, completely escapes me. I see very little in the way of redeeming features here. I included the Trellis With Moss Stitch, pg 261 in the hat for a few reasons. It had ballpark the right number of stitches to match the other two patterns, I wasn’t fussed about it, and I figured it had a natural decrease I could bring into play at the top, if I started it at the right place (row 22). I have also decided not to worry that most of my last bunch of hats are a similar shape. I was pretty worried about a different shape in this context back in January. I will get on another kick soon enough, promise. The best thing about making the same general shape again, is that I just counted up the number of rows in the last couple of hats… 60…so I knew how much of the Traveling Rib Pattern (pg. 281) I could put at the bottom …9 rows. I am not going to give any details of how this hat was done, because I am pretty sure neither I nor anyone else will ever want to recreate it. I did cast on 120 stitches and I can see a hat in travelling rib alone that may be ok.
I did start cutting into the purl edges of the patterns to do the hat decreasing. I didn’t think this really changed the pattern integrity much.