Monday, January 17, 2011

Clockwork hat: corrected

I finished the hat to match my red/orange/green scarf-poncho thing:

Usually when I finish a hat and wear it outside nobody says anything about it, which I tend to be comforted by ("hey! I must not look like I'm wearing an alligator on my head!"). This one drew comments right away, and they were also not of the alligator-on-head variety but purely complimentary, in spite of this business of stranding two identical colours and expecting a consistently visible pattern to come out.

So I would call it a success even if it hadn't also kept my head covered and warm (not always true of hat, you wouldn't believe how many I've made and not shown here) even on some seriously cold days.


This is a redo of an earlier version, and it accommodates various shocking discoveries such as

'stranded knits are snugger than the same number of stitches worked in stocking stitch' and

'yes, a snug ribbing that sits diagonally does look stupid with glasses.'


I wear glasses, you see, for everything but close work and most photographs. This is not exclusively vanity - I am doing so much close work they are always off me and on some table or sofa or back of bookshelf waiting for me to go mad looking for them.

Also, a lot of the hats I design end up looking less than ideal with my glasses, which have a very wide frame that pushes out the sides of a hat. I figure that people with good vision, contacts, or snugger-fitting glasses should be able to see the hats as they would look on them.

Nonetheless, this is what makes me especially happy about this hat: the sneaky tricks I did with the ribbing make it perfectly fine with my glasses.

And yet, the ribbing still does enough of a job to keep the hat on.

Seriously - even with all my hair my coat collar and the big scarf that always end up pushing a hat up to the heavens and off my forehead just when I really need my hands for holding my coat shut in the wind.

Most exciting: this is the base design for the hat I'm doing with Helena. It will be in a different fiber and weight, and the stranded pattern will be new, but all these good features will be in it. I'm just waiting for the yarn now and then I'll be able to get going.

Can. Not. Wait!

2 comments:

Brendaknits said...

Very. Cute.

heklica said...

It looks great! You needn't have worried about the colours, they work perfectly!