A pretty little hat

And so begins the catch-up progress on the Great Backlog of projects since October.  It may or may not be a good thing; you decide :)

So after knitting the grey hat for Marksman, I decided I wanted a geometric hat of my own.  I'd looked through a bunch of the patterns in Mostly Mittens, and there were a large number that wouldn't work at a worsted-to-bulky gauge, like the grey hat, but that would be great knit in a finer gauge.  Say, fingering weight.  (If you think about it, this does make sense.  They are, after all, mitten patterns, and colourwork mittens at that.)  So I pulled out some of the sock yarn stash (because it is massive) and realized that I had a really nice ball of Noro Kureyon sock that I didn't really want to make socks with (would you?) and proceeded to procrastinate.  A few days later, armed with my printer/scanner, some scissors and some tape, I came to the conclusion that the pattern in the book wasn't a continuous repeat; there was no way for me to line up the chart as-printed so that I would have continuous patterning all the way around.  So I almost gave up.  Which would have been sad.  But then I remembered that I have a fabulous tool at my disposal for charting.  And it's not graph paper.  Graph paper is a great thing, but when you're working on a 36-stitch, 70-some odd row chart, it;s not going to happen.  Instead, I use a program called Pixen.  It's a bitmap graphics application (it's apparently excellent for sprite creation) but it comes in handy when I want to make colour charts, too, because I can display the pixel grid (and zoom as close as required).  Even if it always reminds me of the stamp tool in KidPix...  In any case, an hour or so later, armed with a now-complete-and-repeating chart, I cast on.  And ignored the chart for a few days.  I've now fallen in love with corrugated ribbing; I love the way that the colours pop against each other.  No matter that it's not as stretchy/clingy as plain ribbing.  It looks prettier.  After the ribbing was long enough, I started in on my chart.  And it worked beautifully.


I love the way the colours change, all by themselves...

I need to find another ball or two of this Kureyon Sock colorway; I'm a child of the 80's and as such I am subject to rainbow-attraction. 


I love me some bright colours...  

I think the hardest part of the whole hat-making process was when I discovered that I wasn't going to use the entire chart; even in sock yarn, 70 rows is quite a lot.  I adjusted the chart on the fly, and finished it a few days later.  This was back in November, and it's quickly become my very favourite hat.  I'm smitten.  I even love the way the inside looks.


This is the inside.
 

I almost want to knit it in reverse now.