July 2012 #2 - Rat-a-tat-tat

On Friday night at Stitches Midwest Marley Bird will be at the center of the pajama party, having offered up her Ratatouille hat for a Halos of Hope volunteers. Of course I just had to make one. Unfortunately, I think this is officially the largest hat I've ever made. LOL I admit, I'm not one to gauge swatch. I never do for hats, since patients come in many different sizes and I have so many hats to make I figure there will be someone who will fit in my finished hat. I will also point out that I typically knit fairly close to gauge, which also helps. But man, not sure what the heck I did with this hat, but boy, is it big. Which could explain why I rain out of the main color yarn and I had to adapt the stripe pattern since I really didn't want to purchase another skein of the blue.

The pattern is available for purchase from Marley's website. I used Berroco Weekend in Cornflower and Tomatillo on a size 8 16" & 24" circular needle and a set of 8 dpns. I originally started on the 16" circulars, but once all the increases were completed I switched to the 24" to work more comfortably before I returned back to the 16" and then to the dpns.  It is a bit fiddly to switch between the needles, but I'd rather switch the length than struggle with all the extra bulk of the stitches.  Stitches used are knit, purl, kfb and k2tog. I also want to point out the ribbing band felt like it took forever to finish. I'm just not used to knitting anything flat anymore I guess. Once I picked up those stitches and started in the round the rest of the hat just flew off the needles.

If you didn't already know, I'm a librarian in my full-time career.  That said, I'm rather organized and I like to keep records.  Which means I have an entire Excel spreadsheet with details of every hat I've made and who received it.  I just realized that with this completion this will be my 100th hat donated to Halos of Hope.  Yeah me!