After drooling over this book for months, I checked it out of the library to get a feel for the patterns to see if it was worth investing in, and then, my mother-in-law surprised me with it! YAY!
I've only been knitting for 8 months, but the Brattleboro hat on page 54 caught my eye. I became, rather, I AM, obsessed with this hat! It was the main reason for my wanting to purchase the book. ( I had seen people photos of it over and over on Ravelry). However, I was not sure if this project was beyond my skill level, but decided to give it a go. I've been practicing different stitches and became very familiar with the moss stitch due to a baby blanket I just finished ( can't post it yet just in case the new mom reads this!)
I finished the ribbing part of the hat in a day and then the project sat dormant for a few while the rib blocked as to encourage it to relax. When it was finally dry, I picked up the stitches along the edge and joined with my circular. The rounds of moss stitch came easily to me since I felt I had mastered it with my previous project...and then came the decreasing.
That's where the challenge began. I wish I had come across this blog sooner, because it is explained perfectly here. When I knit this hat again, I will definitely follow these directions. I'm glad I came across this blog, because it seemed that even experienced knitters were having difficulty with the pattern. That made me feel all the better because, after all, I am still a beginner!
All in all, I completed the hat and it came out like this:
My only complaint about this hat is the way the decreases came out. For those who don't know what that means, it is the point where you start shaping the crown of the hat. You can't tell from this photo, but I don't think they came out exactly right. I studied the hat images from the blog above and mine came out very different.
The pattern does not indicate when to switch from circulars to DPN's, but I just made the obvious switch to DPN's when the decreasing became difficult. There is a point when you just cannot continue decreasing in the round, (unless you are magic looping) and must switch.
I emailed the author of the blog above to see what her method was. I'm hoping she can shed some light into the process.
If I don't hear back, I am thinking of just going out to get a 40" circular and magic loop it. I do know how to do that, and just knit a bunch of baby items with this method that would have been a pain in the ass otherwise with those tiny DPN's.
Hopefully, that will fix the problem, but it bothers me that I would have to deviate from the suggested needles in the pattern. Oh well! What can I say, I'm a perfectionist. :)
Update: The author just emailed me back (that was quick, thank-you, thank you!) and advised me to magic loop or use 2 circulars. I'm more familiar with magic loop, so magic loop it is! I'll post the results when I am finished.
No comments:
Post a Comment