The Hat

**Update**

Well, I finally finished the hat last night. At least the *hat* part, now I need to finish it off with edging, a pompom, and some "tails" as L calls them. I'm not entirely happy with how it finished up, due to two things:

1. using Magic Loop to finish off, so I didn't have to buy dpns, which seems like an easy technique (and probably is) but which got me a little messed up, but it looks ok.
2. trying to work out the decreases and rate of decrease myself, ie, not using a pattern! I'm not very mathematical, and I kind of struggled with working it out a bit, but it doesn't look too bad.

Need to wash it and I'm sure it will look better, it's a bit curly right now. But no pics until I'm completely done. I must say thank goodness too, because I'm over THE HAT!! This was the 5th attempt at it. Lucky it's supposed to get cool here again next week, cause I know we technically have another month of winter left, but it certainly hasn't felt like winter the last few days, and after all that effort if THE HAT was not worn, well, I would be a bit sad.



***Update***

I've ripped it back. I went a bit far though, and had to redo one ear flap from scratch :( and that one is slightly different to the other one, because I couldn't remember exactly what I had done, as I hadn't written it down yet. But nevermind. The difference is so miniscule that you can't tell. So it will be smaller. Hopefully it will be ok.




This my *own* hat pattern. That is, I have started it from scratch based on what I want and my stitch gauge and L's measurements, I am not following a pattern to knit it. Sounds very clever?! Not really I think. It's been quite easy, and I did do some searching around for other patterns *like* what I wanted - couldn't find what I wanted which is why I decided to just go for it myself. So I did read a few patterns and get an idea of how to do the ear flaps and continue on so that it's all one piece, but as for using a pattern, I'm not. So it's *mine* :) I'm using Blackberry Ridge Bulky merino which I purchased from Monster Knits, in "Talyn". It's lovely.

Now my problem is this. It's quite big. Quite a bit bigger than I thought it would be, which is all part of the learning experience, so I'm not totally devastated by this. It did take me a few attempts to get beyond the two earflaps with the *correct* amount of stitches, but obviously I have more than I need. It does fit. It's just not as snug as I planned, which on one hand is good because it will more than likely fit for some time. On the other hand I'm afraid that it's just going to look too big when I'm done. I'm at the point where I need to begin decreasing to finish the hat off. Also I'm afraid that I'll run out of yarn and not be able to finish it as I would like. Also not devastating because there are a number of other things I could do.

Just trying to decide whether I should rip it out and start again with less stitches or not? I would have to go back to the very beginning after the two ear flaps were done, so I'm not sure if I want to do that or not. I do have to order some dpns in the correc size to finish it off (my LYS doesn't have the correct size :( ) so I have to wait a bit. I'll think about it.