Tuesday, January 11, 2011

In Which I Become Too Small For My Stitches. . .

So one of my many New Year's Resolutions was to try and improve my knitting skills and maybe even attempt a sweater.  I'm absolutely adoring Nicky Epstein's book Knitting Block by Block - so many great patterns and it's very easy to expand them into something bigger, beyond just a square.  I loved her Reversible Hourglass block so much that I turned it into a scarf.  So far so good. 




But then I thought I'd try a matching hat.  I wanted one with cables and found a pattern that I liked in Melissa Leapman's Cables Untangled.  I've tried circular needles and don't really like them, so measured the gauge and with some trepidation knitted away on straight needles.  Finished it, ran to the mirror, and . . . sigh. . . this was the result.


Maybe when the instructions said to cable away until it was 8 inches from the beginning, it meant from the beginning of the hat, not the beginning of the cable?  At any rate,  I appeal to all those experienced knitters out there. Can this hat be saved or do I have to find someone with a very large head?  Or (sniff, sniff) unravel it all and start again? Smaller needles perhaps?  Help!

2 comments:

Amber said...

You could double-over the hat 'in' on itself, to a certain extent, and stitch loosely around to attach the bottom edge about 2/3 of the way up inside the hat (you can also test this solution out before you do it by just turning it in on itself and putting it on.)You would lose that orange colouring - but maybe that could be the sunny surprise on the inside...?

Or you could just pull it up on your head, and let the top part slouch, in an I-meant-to-do-this trendsetting manner.

I bet it did mean 8 inches from the cast-on.

A double-thickness hat would be good here on the prairies right now.

Maylin said...

Thanks so much Amber for all of these suggestions. It's all trial and error, isn't it. My knitting friends have been e-mailing me saying, we've all been there. I do think it was the problem of where I measured the 8 inches from - another piece of advice I've been given is don't necessarily trust the photographs.

So I've started again, with smaller needles and we'll see. I'll probably end up with a hat that's too small!

A friend had a great suggestion of felting the hat - if I turn the orange bit inside, maybe I can turn the whole thing into a felted bowl.