Knits

I bought a book that has what are apparently easy patterns. It sort of seems crazy to buy a book of patterns when there are hundreds and hundreds of free patterns online. But I did. I bought a book. I bought Easy knitted accessories by Jeanette Trotman. I spent about a half hour in Border’s having a look at a number of books and decided this one had the most items in it that I’d consider making.

First up was the Cosy cashmere hat. It’s pretty cute with little ear flaps and a funky shaped top that almost looks like little cat ears. Unfortunately, the recommended yarn is no longer produced which is a bit annoying since the book was only published a year ago. Ah well. I had ordered some yarn off of eBay and thought it would do the trick. Boy was I wrong.

Remember, I’m new to knitting and at the time of this purchase didn’t really understand the various weights and types of yarn available. That said, I didn’t really know that there was much difference between a chunky weight and a superchunky weight. I do now. The gauge on the yarn I bought (purchased with no particular project in mind - I just liked it and it was a bargain) seemed similar enough to the one called for in the pattern*. And in fact, I did a stockinette stitch swatch and it came out slightly smaller than the gauge called for. This seemed to be fine because I’ve got a relatively small head. However, I couldn’t have been more wrong!

I knitted and knitted and was excited to see the pattern come to life. I was knitting this thing! Me! Wow! But it was feeling heavy. Really heavy. And seemed to be kind of big, but seeing I had no experience in this, I thought this was okay. I finished it in a few nights’ time and was so excited to get to show it off. But once I finished, I knew that really, I should hide this in the back of a closet as I had made a big mistake.

The stitches looked fantastic as far as I was concerned, but the size and weight of the thing… oy vey. I put it on my head and it is clearly way too large. Like not just a little big, but a lot big. I could fit me and three friends in this hat. Saddened, but determined.

I wrote the yarn company to ask if they can recommend a replacement yarn for the one that is now discontinued. They did, but I still decide to forge ahead with yet another substituted yarn. This time I read up on it a bit - substituting yarn that is. This time the hat should come out okay. The gauge on the yarn band is smaller, maybe, than the gauge recommended, but I think it should be fine as my knitting has loosened up and again, small head.

So I cast on and the pattern comes alive again. The yarn is slightly hard to work with ’cause it’s a bit fuzzy, but I’m okay with it. I knit and knit and within a few days… done. Hurrah! I carefully seam it up and… it fits! A bit tight, but that’s okay because it will likely loosen up, right!? It’s not way too small like the first eggplant hat and despite the slight smallness, it’s definitely wearable.

I did work the pattern slightly differently since I already had experience with it. The pattern says to break the yarn off once the main body of the hat is completed and place a number of stitches onto a stitch holder. Then cast-off and work the left ear flap. Re-join the yarn and work the right earflap. I decided that it was silly to break the yarn off only to re-join it when I could easily work the right earflap while leaving the other stitches on the needle and then break-off the yarn and rejoin to do the cast-off and left earflap - so that’s what I did. Either method works (obviously).

Oh I did also purchase the recommended substitute yarn and started knitting with it and found it to be way too stiff and way too scratchy so abandoned that rather quickly. I’ll use it for a bag, I guess, as it would felt very nicely.

The details:
Yarn: Rowan polar in shade 646
Needles: US11 (8mm)
Tension / gauge: (in stockinette) 12 sts x 18 rows

Originally the pattern called for Jaegar Cashair.

* The pattern page says 12 sts x 19 rows, however, the yarn reference at the back of the book says 12 sts x 16 rows so this may be why my first attempt was so wrong since it was very close to the gauge listed on the pattern page. There were other errors in this pattern where it would say repeat a particular stitch pattern within a row 4 times but you didn’t actually have enough stitches to repeat 4 times! Good thing I’m slightly clever ;)

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