This project epitomizes my hit-and-run knitting style. When I got back into knitting again (shout out, WMNST 401) I had my eye on it for awhile, and screwed it up several times in a sport weight acrylic, before honing in my skills enough to take my new-found "can do" attitude to the yarn store to find a "nice" yarn for my special project. The goal was the Argyle Lace Hat.
I picked myself up two skeins of Ella Rae Bamboo silk thinking it was "sport weight-y enough" and paying attention only to the fact that it was pretty colored and probably (still) the nicest feeling yarn I have ever worked with. First mistake. Who takes a pattern for a hat made out of 100% alpaca, substitutes it with silk and bamboo, and thinks this will be ok? Particularly when the hat is meant to retain a shape, as obviously as this one does.
Pattern calls for sizes 2 1/2 and 4 needles. Not having the grandmother-stocked needle collection I do now, I think, "3 and 5 are close enough". Gauge swatch? I think not.
Everything was going well enough and I was enjoying the softness and sheen of the yarn, impressing myself with my first lace chart project (and not screwing it up) even knitting while in the car, because I was just so confident. I barely had to pay attention.
Fast forward to the crown decreases, the excitement for my opus-hat is building. Everything goes fine until genius me, in a fatigued state induced by cross-country RV-tripping, reads "SSK, knit across" as "SSK across". Oh boy. Suddenly my fears of not having enough yarn disappear as the crown decreases about 25 rows too early. Still thinking I could do no wrong, I carried on, finally binding off a few minutes later.
And this is what I came up with.
By all means this should be the worst looking hat in the world. It's definitely not what's pictured, but I added in those conveniently matching buttons my mother had found and given to me, and I think it looks great. I've gotten tons of compliments on it. And of course, I only managed to do 2 pattern repeats in the lace since I decreased so early. Oh well, Nambooge, learn from my mistakes!
I think it looks great. And I love the buttons.
ReplyDeleteI picked up "Knitting Rules!" by Stephanie Pear-McPhee from the library today. Before deciding to check it out, I flipped through it to see what it had to offer and though I did not find any patterns inside, I landed on a page which was the all the impetus I needed to take the book with me. On said page there's an illustration of a policeman holding a basket of yarn and below the picture it reads,
"There a lot of ways to do things. Think outside the box and be in charge of your knitting. With wool as my witness, and despite how that lady treated you in the yarn shop that one time, there are no knitting police. Do what you want."