Giant Snowflakes!!

Since I am the queen of overly ambitious agendas and non-binding resolutions, I've made an entirely unenforceable pact with myself to post on all hats that are (currently) at least 90% finished by next Friday. By my calculations, that's four hats... yipes! Time to dust off the old speed-blogging manual...

Yesterday, I delivered hat 12 to its new owner-- my lovely coworker Jess, whom I haven't seen much since she busted her leg skiing. She's not been relishing the activity restrictions, though it does force her to sit still for the camera:

I think she likes the hat... my creepy papparazzi-ing, not so much.

Project Notes

Yarn: Canopy Worsted-- and a bit of Canopy Fingering for the lining. This stuff is softness itself, and too lovely to languish in my stash for as long as it did. Though I suppose the point of a stash is the ability to knit awesome things at a moment's notice. You see, I'm learning! I'm planning to knit my next batch of hats entirely from stash yarn-- contrary to popular belief, I do have some.

Pattern: Improvised! Jess is a hardcore winter adventurer, thus the snowflake motif, which I borrowed from TPHPE (The Prettiest Hot Pad Ever!) by Heather Zoppetti. It's a large motif, so the design is basically just three repeats of the chart. I did a hemmed edge because nothing else would fit! Though I do love a hemmed edge, and that extra layer of warmth is just the thing for cold, windy rides on the chairlift.

Techniques: I had a spot of bother figuring out how to close the top of the hat-- the motif is so tall that I needed to decrease very quickly to prevent the hat from being too long, or worse, poofy on the top. This excellent calculator helped immensely-- the top of the hat is nice and flat, even though I ignored some of the directions... And since I had to unravel and start over twice, I learned how to properly de-kink yarn for re-knitting*-- TECHknitter, as usual, showed me the way.

The Bottom Line: I'm quite pleased with how this one turned out-- it was worth the false starts to get it right in the end. I was also glad to do my part in the "Cheer Up Jess" effort-- she'll be back to imperiling herself in no time.

Stay tuned for more thrilling hat posts than you can shake a stick at-- and while you're at it, check out some other lovely stuff at FO Friday!

*How's THAT for looking on the bright side?