I don’t usually do tension squares.  I figure add about 15-20% more stitches for lots of stranded colours and 10-15 % for heavy cabling.  You can often look at the pictures of the cabling patterns and tell what is being drawn in.   I had no idea on this stitch, Triangular Stitch or Mock Kilting, pg 28.  Barbara just said it had a tendency to roll up into false pleats.  This sounded like it would work for a tam type hat.  I made a tension square on 49 stitches and did about 4 inches so I could get a good sense of how much take in the pleating caused.  I then measured over the middle 35 stitches to determine that 35 stitches drew into about 4 inches.  I multiplied this by 5 to get to the ballpark of 20″ (the nice thing about knitted hats is that they will stretch a bit).  I cast on 175 stitches.  To get the rainbow, I had to carry 7 balls of yarn back and forth.  I used a similar method to one I developed for myself about 30 years ago when I made this sweater for my sister in law:I decided then to use a small ball for each of the colour stripes I carried up the front of this mohair sweater,  This meant I had 25 strands of yarn working in total.  I used to refer to this kind of stuff as my masochistic knitting.  I showed some tartan pillows a while back that fell in the same category.  I remember I had two slotted pieces of plastic and I put one strand in each slot, then put the other piece of plastic on top so the strands were basically running through one hole each.  With care, I could trade the places of two strands of yarn and make sure on the purl side they went back into their old places.  If you left this many strands to their own devices, you would spend as much time untangling as knitting.  This time I cut the slots from a shoe box, put the balls inside and closed the lid.  It worked really well and I only had to stop once to get my strands back in order when I lost concentration.

I am not sure what anyone else thinks about this hat, but I was happy that it actually turned out exactly as I had planned.  When I had the main part of the hat knit, I picked up 4 stitches from each 7 stitch repeat so I had 100 stitches.  I then did garter stitch on the top, 4 rows per colour.  I used  8 points of decrease.  The first decrease needed to get rid of more stitches so I knit 10, knit 2 together, then knit 10, knit 3 together around.  Next time I knit 9, knit 2 together around then knit 8, knit 2 together etc.At this point I had what looked like a giant coffee filter with a rainbow on it.I picked up 100 stitches from the opposite edge and did two rows of garter stitch per colour to finish the hat band.

Spare me from myself, sometimes.  This time, I had a concept.  I was trying to get the feeling of one of those walls of art you see in galleries.  I was thinking of one at the AGO in particular, but I could not find an image of it online.  It took almost as long to plan this hat as to knit it.

I had to figure out the stitches to use, how I was going to fill the spaces with at least one repeat of each stitch.  I had to center the knitting within the block, adding stuff that made sense.  I decided I wanted all the “paintings” to line up top and bottom.   I also needed the same amount of background between the individual “paintings”.  I also made an attempt at framing them by surrounding them with garter stitch, but I wouldn’t call that particular aspect a success on the aran coloured hat.
The bottom, background and top were done in Diagonal Stitch, pg 120.  I cast on 120 stitches and worked 8 rows.  I then did two rows of garter stitch where I was going to place a “painting”, and continued with the Diagonal Stitch in between.  This hat also used Twist-Stitch Diamond Pattern, pg 120, Variation Smocking, pg 134, Little Knot Stitch, pg 132, Peppercorn Stitch, pg 133, King Charles Brocade, pg 31,  Pyramid Pattern, pg 29 and Twist-Stitch Waves, pg 124…8 stitches total.Once I had done 32 pattern rows and put the garter stitch on top of the “paintings”, I only had room for an aggressive decrease.  I used 10 points of decrease and decreased every other row.

I went to movies last Tuesday (Oscar contenders, yeah!) while I was in the planning stages of the first hat and Christine, who was with me, said I shouldn’t do it in white, I should do different colours for the “paintings”.  I knew I was going to do the aran coloured hat because I love the texture you see with the off-white wool.  I told Alan when he got home and he said I had to do both.  This one was done on two needles and you can see the seam to the left of the orange/purple blocks.  Seams have always been a nemesis of mine.  I will have to ask for help sometime.  ANYHOW.  I had the rainbow of balls from the hats last week and thought, what the heck. 

Back to the planning notebook I went and worked out another layout, this time using Italian Chain Ribbing, pg 47 as the background and 114 stitches.  This meant I had to leave 6 stitches in between, but unlike the Diagonal Stitch which had a two stitch repeat, I had to line the “paintings” up so that a full pattern repeat went up between them, and I had to fudge the patterns sideways as well as height-wise so they fit properly.  The knitting was infinitely more complicated on this one, what with all that Intarsia going on and the balls getting tangled (themselves)  and untangled (painstakingly by me).  I outlined the paintings with a round of crocheted chain stitch to simulate frames before I finished the top.

I reduced in the last row to 108 so I had 18 of the 6 stitch repeats left.  I decreased every 12th stitch, then every 11th stitch, etc maintaining the pattern as much as possible as I went.  (9 points of decrease, decreasing one stitch every other row).  This hat also used Pennant Stitch, pg.  29, Diamond Brocade and Double Diamond Brocade from pg. 30, English Diamond Block Pattern, pg 31, Inverness Diamonds, pg 32 and Diamond Stripe, pg. 33…7 stitches in all.  Two hats, 15 stitches…not bad, eh Barbara!

I had a couple of job interviews this week.  I had to compete for my job in the cooking unit, so I am now officially a cook at Upper Canada Village..yeah!!  I was on temporary assignment last summer.  I also had an interview for a job that would be a “shoot me now” kind of deal.  Four months answering emails from the public about how to fill out their census forms.  I am really glad they have reinstated the census, but.

I bought three balls of Cascade 220 and used them to make these three hats.  I used a different colour for the lower part of each hat, then used my last three patterns that use three colours.  I had to skip ahead a few stitches for the white hat to find an appropriate stitch.  I did the blue one first.  I made the bottom in a long band on two needles using Tyrolean Medallion, pg 246, then sewed the ends together and picked up and knit the body of the hat using Three-Color Basket Tweed, pg 76.Because of the bold blue lines, I was able to make a decent shot at the top.This one I knit straight up from the bottom edge using Dotted Chevron, pg. 28, then Motley Check, pg.76.The top on this one turned out so-so.I did this one last and again went straight up from the bottom edge using Medallion Cable, pg.246 and finishing with Triple L Tweed, pg. 81.The top on this one is a bit of a dead loss, you can vaguely see the spiral arms of the decrease coming in but it is lost in the pattern mostly.

I had actually used two of these patterns before, way back in November, 2013 when I was doing Teletubby Puke colours.

I am having a bit of a crisis about THE PROJECT these days.  After having spent most of the last year knitting like crazy from a 50 year old book, and having filled up 3 extra large Ziploc Space bags (the kind you suck the air out of with a vacuum) with hats, I begin to wonder WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING???  Is this just stupid?  I guess if I wasn’t doing this I would be knitting something else anyway, so for now, I guess I will soldier on.  190 pattern stitches down, 354 to go…are you kidding me…seriously, this is stupid.

I felt I had to get rid of the Tulip Pattern, pg 25 because I kept thinking ugh! every time I looked at it.  I did garter stitch instead of stockinette in the below and above rows of the pattern, but I feel these are just to sides of the same coin anyway.  I used 99 stitches for this, then increased to 112 for the Navajo Basket, pg 75.  I went back down to 104 for the Chevron, pg 26 because, being a simple knit/purl combination, it takes in much less than the colour work.  I did a repeat of the Chevron pattern, then decreased to 88 for another go at the Navajo Basket.

At this point, I noticed that the Chevron wanted to collapse on itself.  I had been planning to do stair steps with the Navajo Basket on the top, but I thought…lets go with this and I did another two folds, decreasing 16 stitches every time I changed patterns.  I have accordianed the hat out a bit below so you can see the structure a little better.