Holy cozy cabled hats, Batman!

The original impetus for starting a blog was simply to have a place to post the first pattern I'd written, the Cozy Cabled Hat. I've been thoroughly entertained with the whole experience since, and hadn't thought about my humble blogging origins in a while. So at lunchtime, while working hard (read: trolling Ravelry) I was delighted to discover that two real-live human beings have tried and successfully used the Cozy Cabled Hat pattern!





Whoa! I was especially pleased to see that one utilized the gigantor headed dude-size, since there seems to be a lack of dude-sized hat patterns. I'm almost feeling inspired enough to get off my duff and take some pictures for the Infinite Cabled Hat, since all that is left to do is add some enticing photos to the pattern. But again, so damn hot, milk was a bad choice, etc. etc. Perhaps this weekend.

Cozy cabled hat

The hat is complete and the pattern is ready for download! It was actually complete on Friday, but I had work to do (what the hell?) instead of updating my virtual logbook. Over the weekend I encountered some big-headed people (literally--I can't say in regards to their opinion of themselves) and I had them test drive it. They confirmed the fit and feel were fabulous! Ahem, pardon my alliteration. I covet the fabric, as always seems to happen when I knit something for someone else. So soft! I did find two minor errors in the pattern going through it. I got those corrected, and my copilot made the file into a pdf. Here, he's modeling it (though he has about a M size head):



Another angle:

Photo taken moments before the crowd of screaming women jumped on him, insatiably turned on by his sexy hat.

Since it's a bit large for him, you can see some puckering at the top, sometimes referred to as a nipple. Or as a knipple (another portmanteau! Isn't it so wonderful how we have all these new made up words to save time???? Ouch I just popped another capillary in my eye) by the TECHknitter, whom in the previous link gives some good advice how to avoid this erotic region. Aside: LOVE the TECHknitter. I use his/her advice constantly.

So without further ado, here's the Cozy Cabled Hat. Click the link, and it should be download-able as a pdf through Ravelry. You don't have to have an account.

Please, try it out! Let me know if there are errors, you like it, you hate it, etc. If you're on Ravelry, you can check out the two that I have finished. Screen name: agcertain. I'm one of those boring people who is too afraid to choose a screen name other than a derivation of their actual name. Look, I got burned back when everyone was first getting email and I chose something that was a combination of a nickname and a sport I played, and it turned out to be very close to a euphemism for a sex act that I was unaware of. One letter away, in fact.

An update on my cheap-ass double-pointed needles: I received them, and am thoroughly enjoying them so far. They haven't punctured any of my vital organs, or mangled my hands (or more importantly, yarn) with splinters, and I love that they have the size laser etched onto the sides of each needle. I'm forever holding and weighing the feel of dpns, trying to make a guess what size they are. I do miss the slight coating that the Clover bamboo needles have--the yarn doesn't slide quite as well on these, nor the needles past each other. They may smooth out over time, though. However--the set of US 5 that I need to continue work on my sweater have disappeared as mysteriously as they came. More mysteriously even, since I think they came by UPS (a dark and clandestine organization for sure, but it's hard to stay covert with those big brown trucks). I know it was in the pack, I saw it, set it out to use, and now it's gone. So to conclude:

Pros

• cost


• sizes laser-etched on needles


• fairly smooth bamboo

Cons

• no coating


• intermittent invisibility

The importance of gauge

Does it mean anything that I wrote the title "The impotence of gauge" first?

Nobody likes to make gauge swatches. It's a thankless chore, preventing you from getting to the fun stuff. But I'm getting ahead of myself. What is gauge?

knitting gauge (or tension): the number of stitches per inch (or cm) and number of rows per inch (or cm) in stockinette (unless the pattern indicates otherwise) stitch.

Easy, right? Almost every patten, whether it's a tiny baby bonnet or an extra-large cardigan, warns you to CHECK YOUR GAUGE. Even with the menacing ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, I still sometimes neglect to do it because I regard it as a PAIN IN THE ASS. If you're wondering how one checks their gauge, there's a nice (albeit sparse) how to here. The bottom line: if you have more stitches/rows per inch than indicated in the pattern, your extra-large cardigan could end up baby sized, and on the flip side you have less stitches/rows per inch, your baby bonnet could end up being your new hat. So you knit this worthless (I know, people do cutesy things with them sometimes, but the only cutesy thing I've ever done is throw them into a drawer with the promise that I'll look up some cutesy thing to use them for then never look at them again) little swatch to make sure you're going to come out with the correct sized piece. Too many stitches/rows per inch? Try larger needles. Too few stitches/rows? Smaller needles. It grants you a peace of mind to know you're not going to create a freakish sized garment (unless the pattern is horribly written, in which place you're screwed from the get-go. Sorry about that).

What I've never seen emphasized, though, is that it gives you an example of what the fabric is going to look and feel like. I realized this in the process of making my trial XL hat, once I switched to larger needles after the brim. The fabric was far too thin for a winter cap; I could see my fingers through the stitches when holding it. It was also boring as hell; the yarn color is 'oatmeal', and on my albino-toned/tow-headed friend it would probably just blend right in to his head. If I had only made a swatch...

Snore. The photo doesn't do it justice, but trust me, my fingers are showing through the fabric.

Deep breath, no worries. It only took five years of knitting for me to come to terms with the fact that taking apart any amount of work is better than forging onward if the item is the wrong size/full of obvious mistakes/ugly. That is why I'm currently in possession of a hideous dingy yellow-colored sweater-vest, and a lovely sweater that when worn is so tight and see-through as to be illegal in most southern states. So I ripped it apart. I have a lot of wonderful green NZ merino 4-ply yarn left over from making my husband a neck gaiter for skiing (perhaps a post on that later), so I decided to beef up the size and color by holding a strand of that with the worsted weight oatmeal yarn.


My first instinct? Start in on the pattern, of course! Argh, have we learned nothing? I went through all my usual rationalizations: surely this was going to make a good fabric, these colors are great together, it will be the right size, I can just tell. After some mental gymnastics, I was resolute--make the damn swatch already!


And it was lovely.

Maybe I'll actually look up some of those cutesy things to do with swatches this time...

Fuzzy math

Since I'm stuck on my sweater progress (a silk-free Silken Scabbard) until I get the necessary tools, I started work on the XL hat for my officemate. After casting on, it was immediately clear that something wasn't adding up; rather, things were adding up to incorrect numbers. How I had calculated the larger sizes added two inches of circumference for every one inch in increased head size. Oops. My officemate might have a big-ass head, but we're talking Joe Merrick levels of hat here. I always used to get the Elephant Man confused with elephantiasis, which affects...a completely different body part. I reduced the (I hope) appropriate numbers and have the brim finished.

I also started working on my pattern layout. I like the column format best so far, although I'm not sure if having rows split onto multiple lines is confusing. They're certainly more aesthetically pleasing, so, there you go. I need to include at least one picture of the finished product, but I haven't actually taken any yet. I decided to go with a placeholder until such time when there is a competent human being around to snap a picture. ClipArt is soooo 1996, so I passed it over and went with the "Photos" folder, which turned out not to be my pictures (those are, oddly enough, in the "Pictures" folder), but stock photos included with my software. They ran the gamut from Inspirational:



to Scenic:



to Meth Lab:




to Interracial Hand Holding:



to Pornographic:



That one just wasn't the right size (cue the "That's what she said" jokes....now).

More drug abuse:



Strangely, there were a lot more drug paraphernalia photos in addition to those seen here. I guess dealers are a target demographic for Microsoft Office?

I eventually settled on this one:



I think we can all relate.