Headgear

Much better today, after a brief couch-nap-with-cat yesterday and a full night's sleep. Whew.

I did not break out the sewing machine, and even waited until today to fire up the iron.

Let's see, other than not sleeping well, what did I do last week? On Saturday, I knit a hat. A whole hat, with chunky yarn and 8mm double-points.

This is the Quick Cosy Hat from Issue 101 of Simply Knitting (the 8mm double-points came as a free gift with the magazine, thank you Simply Knitting!). The yarn is Knitpicks Cadena in Currant, rather less than a full skein. In the magazine, the hat looks kind of beret-like, but mine is more beanie-ish. I wonder whether I had gauge issues.

And on Sunday, I cast on a hat. Man, this yarn. Let me tell you about this yarn. I bought it about two years ago, enchanted by the neutral colors in the skein. It wasn't long before I wound it into a ball, where the colors were still enchanting, and started to knit it into a sock.

Suddenly I was disenchanted. The colors pooled, and badly. One side of the sock was all black and brown, the other side all grey and beige. I blamed the pattern, as I am wont to do, and ripped it out and tried another pattern. And another, and another. And then I put it away for a good year, before trying just one more pattern - which pooled. Badly. Just like all the others. There was clearly no way this yarn could ever be a sock.

Fine, I thought, I'll try a scarf. Nope - it pooled just as badly in scarf form as it had in sock form. Rrrrrgh. Fine. FINE. The ball can just sit here and look pretty forever, BE THAT WAY.

And then, on Sunday, I saw this hat pattern. I'd seen it before, of course, as it lives in a magazine that lives in my house, but this weekend I looked at the pattern and suddenly felt new hope for my Difficult Ball of Sock Yarn. A hat? Could it be a hat?

 Yes. It can be a hat.