A Clump of Hats

I was working on the gray items. Really, I was.

Then I realized that I was meeting a friend for coffee after work on Friday, and I can't read charts or count while drinking coffee and chatting. So, I started a hat.

Ann Budd's Basic Hat Pattern (mine ravelled here),

knit in Blue Moon Fiber Arts' Gaea, Jabberwocky colorway

My coworkers and I sponsor a couple families for Hanukah each year, and one of the adult women requested a warm, knit hat. I decided to use the yarn left from the herringbone hat disaster. When I reknit Andrew's hat, I didn't use the yarn I had used originally. I used the other half of the skein. The yarn I had frogged from the hat was slightly felted. It worked fine reknitting it into a plain hat though. This yarn is so busy that it needs a very plain stitch pattern, so I knit it following Ann Budd's hat instructions.*

Because I am skilled in the art of denial, I pretended this wouldn't grow when I washed it. I'm still not sure why I did that, since I have painful memories of this exact yarn growing. Maybe I thought it wouldn't grow because it had already grown in the wash.

The hat's too big.

Pretty colors, but too big.

I'm planning to take it to a friend this weekend and see if it fits him. He has a big head. I choose to remain hopeful.

Because I am a Glass Half Full kind of person, I've decided this is for the best. The woman for whom I was knitting lives in a nursing home. I cannot depend on the person who does her laundry to handwash a hat. It probably would have gotten felted. Then she would have been sad.

So, I went to Michael's and shopped the acrylic. I made this on Sunday.

Ann Budd's Basic Hat Pattern (mine ravelled here), 

knit in Red Heart Boutique Unforgettable, Echo colorway

I know this yarn is Red Heart. I, too, try to avoid Red Heart whenever possible. However, the colors are pretty and the yarn is soft. This is no Super Saver, and the color shifts are interesting.

In this midst of those two hats, I saw my neighbor. She is pregnant. Very pregnant. She said she's doing a lot of walking, including up and down her staircase, in hopes of encouraging the baby to make her appearance. I kept thinking about how astounding it is that this woman is making another person. If she's making a new human, the least I can do is make that human a hat.

I picked white because their baby will be dark-skinned, and I think white will look beautiful against the brown.

Otis Baby Hat (mine ravelled here),

knit in Bernat Softee Baby in white

The pattern has an 8-row cable, which you repeat two and a half times before doing the decreases. I changed this to a 5-row cable as the result of misreading the pattern a careful design choice.

I think I'm done making hats now. Back to gray!

*Ann Budd's The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns is indeed handy.