My First Hat

A hat! I haz a hat! Don’t scoff, you who knock out Finished Objects every couple of hours, Monday to Sunday (you know who you are). I normally take aeons to finish anything, so the fact that I made this in approximately two weeks, including the swatch, is actually pretty remarkable.

It is one of the Three Tams by Angela Sixian Wu, from Knitty. (Tam C, since you ask.) It’s my first stranded colourwork hat, it’s my first tam, and as the title of this post implies, I believe it’s actually the very first hat I’ve ever knit for myself. Crazy.

Also, I really like it. Here’s how it went:

Remember the Gorgonswatch? And the maths?

As calculated, I cast on 128 stitches (using a 3.75mm circular because I couldn’t find the 3.5mm, and I like to live dangerously) and did some lovely, lovely corrugated ribbing. Then I switched to a 4mm needle, increased, and set off up the charts.

Then I frogged because I’d misread the pattern and increased by twice the number of stitches required. (Blame sleep deprivation.) Here you see the ribbing, artfully arranged upon a bed of ripped-out yarn.

Good thing I like colourwork. Here I am back at the point where I’d had to rip before. All well.

I switched to dpns once the decreases began, and after that it was essentially all over bar the shouting. I finished it last night.

Celebrations

1. As I said, hat! For me! In stranded colourwork! With corrugated ribbing!
2. I’m also very happy with the colours. Noro doesn’t always tickle my catastrophe, but this colourway really works for me. I love the way it pops out against the black.
3. Speed! I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s possible that my habit of knitting huge and/or complex garments for myself has influenced my perception of how long it takes to make me stuff.
4. Finally, I’m altogether too amused by the fact that you block a tam with a dinner plate. Not sure why, but I’ve been giggling every time I’ve visited it today for a fondle (which was often, because I have very little self-control).

Lessons

1. Read the pattern! If the pattern says “[k4 m1] to end”, then you’ll want to [k4 m1] to end – rather than, oh, let’s just pick an example entirely at random, [k2 m1] to end.
2. Hats are quick. So even if you have to rip out a couple of inches, it won’t take long to set right.
3. A tip about this pattern, which won’t make much sense unless you’re actually knitting it: When you come to the beginning of each double decrease round, you’ll want to slip the stitch you’ve just knit (i.e. the last stitch of the previous round) back onto the left-hand needle. This will allow you to slip 2 knitwise, as instructed, and still end up with the decrease in the correct position. (I botched this a couple of times before hitting on the solution.)
4. Another tip, which should make sense regardless: When I had the blocking plate set up, I took a needle point and went along each green “spoke” in the central star, wozzling the stitches so that they’d lie nice and evenly. (Yes, “wozzling”. It’s a technical term.) They got a bit pulled about when I was knitting, giving them a tendency to disappear into the black.

In conclusion, big yay. Even better, it looks as though the coldish weather is set to continue this week, so I may even have cause to wear my new hat soon.