a tale of 2 (3) hats

As I travelled to work last Friday, on the train, I took my lovely 100% lambswool Howies hat off, that I have worn for a few winters with love, and put it on my lap. Then I got my bag of crochet, and popped that on my lap, and proceeded to ripple along merrily.

The train was busy, so as my station approached, I hastily put the crochet back in the bag, stood up and squeezed my way past a load of commuters, and got off. As I got off, a horrid thought went through my head, "where is my hat?" And I knew. There was no way I had time to get back on the train either. Yes, I put in a call to lost property, but they never reunite you with your belongings.

And at the moment it is still cold out, and my head needs a hat. So the following day I went to town in search of a hat, but none were to be found. So I knew what I needed to do. Knit one for myself.

Of course, as I'm such a procrastinator of projects, I had the perfect quick knit wool in, that I bought, 7 or 8 years ago, waiting for a moment such as this. I also am on ravelry, so I looked up some big knit wool hats and combined a few patterns. I decided to go for this look, the Banana Republic Knock off Hat but my wool was a heavier weight than the one in the pattern, so I tweaked it all to something like this:

Hat #2 was quick and easy enough to sew up, but it's not the most perfect hat. Luckily inspiration wasn't too long to be found. I test drove my new hat to the park. And while there I saw my perfect new hat. It was a pull on woolly hat, but with a criss cross stitch (lattice) over it.

Again Ravelry came to the rescue, as I scoured it for yet another hat pattern. I discovered this, the Koolhass Hat, by Jared Flood, published by Interweave Press. And it looked a very good match, to the hat in the park.

So I purchased some suitable wool, although after a lot of toing and throwing with the woman in the shop, who didn't believe the instructions!

I cast on yesterday, 104 stitches, knitted about 15 rows, this is my first ever, in the round and cable project, realised my cable was out of sync, in half the hat, but fine in the other half? So I unravelled and have recast on today. Which is just as well as I was doing the rib wrong as well!!! I read it as k1, p1, p1 repeat, it's actually k1, p1, p1, k1 repeat, I did think my rib as wrong, but never realised yesterday!!!

This is going to take a while this hat. It might even be summer before I can wear it, who knows? But if it works out, I'll be very proud of my new achievement.