Look, I Made a Hat

Where there never was a hat!

Jeff and I watched an old PBS version of Sunday in the Park with George as I was, well, finishing the hat. Watch it if the first few words of this post don’t make any sense.

I made a chunkier version of Jared Flood’s Turn A Square Hat for myself out of the leftover bits of Berroco Vintage Chunky that was used for all the cowls, gaiters and neck warmers that I’ve been knitting over the past few weeks. A little something for me to enjoy. I’ve only taken it off to sleep and get a haircut since it came off the needles. I’m going to get a kick out of seeing whether anyone catches on that all of the colors in their various garments are in this hat. It just worked out that there was room for 7 two-round stripes on the basic background color.

I modified the pattern to a chunky yarn. I figured out the gauge and then came up with a number, divisible by four, that would get about the same circumference – 64 in this case, as opposed to the 96 in the original pattern. I also didn’t mess with changing needle sizes between the ribbing and the main body, nor did I do any increasing. I wanted this to be snug. Other hats I’ve made for myself have been to big – I think I overcompensated for what I perceive to be a larger-than-average melon – so I wanted to keep things on the small side. At the point where there were to be 26 stitches between the four decrease points, I had 16. Everything else pretty much followed the pattern.

I love it. Some commenters over at Flickr asked if I was going to knit something for Jeff from some of this yarn, but he took a pass. He generally thinks that handknit things are too scratchy for wearing next to the skin – and believe me, hats are touching a lot more skin than they used to for both of us. So this one is mine, all mine. I’ve started calling it The Precious.

Think about it. It has all the colors of the cowls and gaiters I’ve knit over the past few weeks, so it must have some sort of power over them, like Tolkien’s The One Ring:

Two cowls for the in-laws through sis and bro
Two for the siblings, younger of three
Four for niece/nephews on slopes of snow
A hat for the knitter – that would be me
In the land of mountains, where the skiers go
One hat to rule them all, one hat to bind them
One hat made from them all -- for him who entwined them