Ruthless Knitting

We live in Wisconsin, and it has been a cold and snowy February. This weekend, we got about a foot of snow in two separate waves. Isn’t it pretty?

We keep the thermostat set at a decidedly conservative 60 degrees — down to 57 at night — so it’s quite chilly in the house in the mornings. David often wears a jacket and a hat around for the first few hours after he wakes up, and he asked me to make him a hat that wouldn’t cover his ears. (He was always wearing his favorite stocking cap pushed up above his ears, and that just looks silly.) He figured I could make it in doubled-up sock yarn, which wouldn’t take too long and would be soft. He’s clever, my husband.

I rediscovered the Halfdome pattern on Knitty, and David agreed it was just the thing. After I swatched in Knit Picks Gloss, Stahl Wolle Socka, and Henry’s Attic Kona Superwash in a light gray — with the plan to use the Socka or the Kona for the trim and the Gloss for the main part of the hat — David asked if I could make the top in four wedges alternating between blue and black and then use the gray yarn for the brim. Done and done.

Pattern: Halfdome by Jesse Loesberg, Knitty Summer 2006
Size: 21″ circumference, about 7.5″ from crown to brim (brim unrolled)
Yarn: Knit Picks Gloss in black; Stahl Wolle Socka Color in 9128, blue tones; Henry’s Attic Kona Superwash Fingering dyed light gray
Yardage: less than 1 ball of each
Yarn Source: Knit Picks, my aunt Cathy, and Catnip Yarns, respectively
Needles: bamboo straights in size 5 for crown; size 3 dpns for rolled brim
Gauge: 5 stitches per inch in Gloss, about 5.5 stitches per inch in Socka
Notes/Modifications: I was worried that I would make this hat the wrong size for David’s head, so I modified the pattern to knit from the top down so that I would have less to rip out if I got it all wrong. At David’s request, I also changed the crown from a solid color to four sections of two colors connected intarsia-style. I cast on 10 stitches (3 black, 2 blue, 2 black, 3 blue), increased every other row (at first only four times per row, then eight times per row once there were enough stitches), continued increasing until I had 133 stitches on the needles, knit straight to the brim, and changed to smaller needles for the remainder. I put the hat on waste yarn twice to have David try it on, which was a good idea because it turned out he didn’t need as much length as the pattern called for (perhaps because the increases took up more length in my version than the decreases called for in the pattern?). The only thing I’m not entirely happy with is the very top, which is a bit pointier than I would like. David doesn’t mind.

These three yarns are all so nice and make such a lovely hat that I’m considering doing another one or two. I have a Dulaan contribution that I need to finish up.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 27th, 2007 at 2:53 pm and is filed under Finished Objects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.