Mum just phoned to ask where today’s post was so i thought I better get on it.  I am on a bit of a knitting roll these days, so I have a build-up of hats.  These all have pink in them, so I thought I would show them together.

Before I started on the Barbara Walker thing, I was going to wool stores and buying stuff from the deep discount bins.  I looked through them last week and found the one on the bottom of this hat.  I did the bottom in Lattice Cable, pg 276.  I cast on 120 stitches because I knew the heavy cabling would pull it in a lot.  The Lattice Cable has an 8 stitch repeat.  I decreased one stitch per repeat down to 105 as I switched to the pink for the Traveling Ribbed Eyelet, pg 169, which has a 7 stitch repeat. 

I think the top worked out fine.  I love playing with the decreases to get hopefully interesting patterns on the top.  When I was a quilter, I was all about the back of the quilt looking good with the quilting, now I am all about the tops of the hats.

Hat number two got switched upside down, and I think it is a much better hat than it would have been if things had worked out as originally planned.  I cast on 120 stitches and I thought this would be enough for the draw-in I knew would happen with the Close-Woven Basket Lattice (pg. 278).  I was wrong.  After I had enough of the Two-Color Twisted Ladder, pg 120 to start the decreasing, I realized that if I kept going, it would have had to be another little girl’s hat, so I did the decreases to make this happen.  When I finished, the solid bottom was much too strong visually.   I  could have folded the bottom in two, but I didn’t want to loose the lovely cabling.  I forgot to take a picture before I ripped it back to before the decreasing,   I finished off the now bottom and cast off, then I picked back up from my cast on edge and adjusted the stitch pattern so I could make a top that worked, at least for me.

I actually love the top myself.

This last hat reminds me of something from the sixties.  It uses Horizontal Parallelogram Check (pg 25) on the bottom, then switches to Royal Quilting, pg 72.  I figured out a trick for the tension on the Royal Quilting which was to put my thumb in the travelling strand before knitting the stitch.  This seemed to give the strands just enough slack to pull up without distorting the knitted fabric.

I was going to put a pompom on top like the style seems to be right now, but I like the top and it took a couple of tries to get it ok.  I will probably make the pompom and put it on anyway soon.

I did a couple of hats with bobbles this week.  This first one uses Basic Lattice, pg 276, then a couple of rows of garter stitch before a row of bobbles and another row of garter stitch.  I continued up the hat with Diagonal Rib, pg 24.  I am not thrilled with the top of this one, but it is not bad enough to rip out and redo.  Besides, I am not sure what I would do to improve it.

The next one uses Ribbed Lattice with Bobbles, pg 277.  I reduced quite aggressively at the top so it is pretty flat. I like this top better than the other hat.

I cast on too few stitches and it became apparent that this could not be an adult hat without severely distorting the stitches.  I decided to end it early and make it a childs hat.  I swung by my niece Cate’s house and delivered it on my way out of town the other day.

Arya got a new hat…

I used 102 stitches and Striped Quilting Pattern, pg 72.  I used four points of decrease and decreased two stitches every other row three times in each 8 row pattern repeat.