A finished item - Pink Girlie hat

I’m really chuffed with myself for finishing the hat. All I need to do is finish off the loose ends, but that won’t take long. So here it is...


...I like it, it looks good…but it’s just crying out for these...


...much better :)

I’ve really enjoyed making this, I’m so pleased it’s worked out as well as it has.

As I said in my previous post, I’ve had to master two thing to make this, three if you count using circular needles for anything other than messsing around and seeing how they work, but I’m not going to count that.

1. Cables

I decided to have a go at doing cables because I wanted the hat to be quite ribby, and cables were an ideal way of making it a little bit more interesting. I did what any modern knitter does when faced with having to learn something new, I Googled it. I found lots of sites that gave instructions for plain twisted cables, but I wanted to keep the rib space between the twists. It took a while to find a site that covered what I needed and was easy to understand, in the end two sites gave me the most help, this one http://www.eunnyjang.com/knit/2005/11/technickety_how_to_unvent_a_si.html and another one which I haven’t bookmarked and can’t seem to lay my hands on just now. These, together with some time spent just trying things out and seeing what happened...

…helped me get to grips and understand how it all worked. I knew exactly what I wanted the hat to look like, and luckly, it looks *exactly* like the picture I had in my head.

2. Three needle cast-off (or bind-off as some seem to say)

I have to admit that this seemed like quite a daunting term but I knew I wanted to try it as it saved sewing, and reports said that it makes a neat seam. Perfect. Again I Googled and found lots of people keen to share how to do this technique, and more than that, they said it was easy. I found this site to be very clear and understandable http://www.crazyauntpurl.com/archives/2005/12/one_bassackward.php, it has great pictures and commentary.

It turns out that three needle cast-off *is* really easy! Not only is this method neat from the right-side, but from the wrong side too...

I still need to do the matching leg warmers but I’m going to give my hands a break and work on my orange jumper for a bit which is on 12mm needles. Thinking about, I couldn’t start them even if I wanted to because I’m waiting for the double pointed needles I need for them to arrive.