What hat?

The hat is having issues and therefore is not complete. Actually the hat is in a little time out as I had plan on only using one ball of my Pioneer yarn that costs $26.00 for 50grams. It's pricey because it's grown by sheep here in California, milled in the US, and then dyed in small batches at the wonderful A Verb for Keeping Warm. I've knit an entire short sleeved fair isle sweater from it and adore this yarn for all it stands for (though I would love for it to be 3 ply instead of 2), and am using the leftover yarn to knit a matching hat. It has plowed through the first ball and while in the second ball my increasing and decreasing math left something to be desired.

I have been knitting these instead:

Currently on the heel flap of the
second sock

This is my take on the Dublin Bay Socks knit with Malabrigo, bought at Knitterly, in a colorway I cannot name because I lost the label a while ago when it was destined to become another pair of socks that went the way of frogging. I grabbed this yarn because it reminds me of rain and since it has been raining recently I thought is was appropriate. I'm a simple kind of gal.

This year I have a goal to knit myself 7 pairs of socks so that when Ben and I go to the cabin on the lake I will not freeze like I normally do. Wool socks are a must there as there are no carpets, and it's not heated unless someone is there, which is never during the winter. We love going in the winter as not many people are in town. We spent our anniversary there and went to the country club nearby for a great dinner. It really is the best way to vacation. I'd honestly live there year round if possible.

A Hat

I'm knitting a hat. I started on Tuesday night and was reading the poorly scanned pattern on my phone (computer was too far away and I was using my nook to watch Netflix).

The pattern is one that I found while looking for a hat to match the fair isle sweater I'd just completed. I wanted something that matched, had some leftover balls of Pioneer (which is a rather nice but expensive yarn), and decided that no pattern but this one would do.

The Katie Beret is a lovely fair isle pattern that reminds me of golfing in the 1920's. The colorful fair isle sweaters were made popular by then playboy Prince Edward VIII.

There were a few problems that I ran into however when I decided to knit the hat.

First was getting a hold of the pattern that was published in 2009. It's currently supposed to be available online, but the website had been redone and I hit a deadend there. Rather then give up on the hat I began to message people that had knit the pattern and asked them for a copy of it, explaining that the website no longer had it posted. More then a few got up in arms over copyright issues (and a couple of them also proved that they hadn't read my message fully when they told me to go find it on the website), but one blessed person understood the problem and got me the pattern within a couple days.

The lovely Althea from Australia copied and emailed me a scan of the page from her magazine. I was off to the races now right? Wrong.

The pattern is blurry and hard to read, also after knitting the ribbed band I found out that the hat is knit flat and then seamed up the back. Think about this.

Fair Isle
Hat
Seamed up the back

Who does this designer think she it? Who does fair isle flat? Why knit a tam flat? This is insane.

With all this running through my head I'm knitting it in the round and we'll see if I have a had come Monday.