Oh shit, what’s this? 13 days into 2013 and we already have two finished projects?! HOLY STASH BUSTING BATMAN.

Says the person that went to AC Moore a few days ago and bought three bags of mill ends. Yeah. Look at me busting through my stash. Not.

Sometime last year, I came upon a delicious acrylic/wool blend yarn made by Caron. It was Vickie Howell’s Sheep(ish) worsted weight. And it came in a gorgeous turquoise color (aptly named “turquoise(ish)” that I just could NOT pass up. I mean, so pretty. And it was so soft. I don’t remember how many skeins of it I bought, but I know that, at some point, I have to go back and buy some more in other colors, because it just knit up so nicely! It almost has a mohair appeal to it, which I think is what gives it it’s softness.

Anyway, I digress.

I set out to organize the folder on my computer called “Knitting”, which was full of knitting patterns I had downloaded from Ravelry and other places and sort of just dumped there. It’s amazing how many interesting patterns you find when you do some organization! I had completely forgotten about a lot of them. However, during my organization, I couldn’t find “the one” pattern for my sheepish skein.

To Ravelry I go!

The great thing about having a set of interchangeable circular needles and knowing the magic loop method of knitting is that when I go to the Ravelry Pattern Browser, all I have to refine my searches by are the type of object I want to knit and the yarn type. No more having to search by a certain needle because I have them all! That being said, I selected worsted weight/aran weight, and hat, and was inundated with about 20+ pages of free patterns for my use. After combing through them all once, then twice for the sake of possibly missing something particularly special, I settled on Cap Karma by SmarieK Knits. I actually almost didn’t pick this pattern, because I didn’t like the way that the cables just stopped abruptly before the decreases for the crown started. However, on her blog post, she mentioned that Brooklyn Tweed had tweaked the pattern so that the cables continue up into the top of that hat. For that reason alone, I was sold. Plus, the hat that BT made with the pattern just made it look lovely.

I unfortunately ran into a couple of snafus (totally my own fault mind you, because I apparently cannot count), but they were nothing that couldn’t be fixed (or fudged, as it were). Overall, I was happy with the end result, because I loved the subtle cable pattern, and they look really nice in the turquoise color. The hat itself is actually pretty long, which is good, because it’ll cover your ears. I haven’t let Mr. Fox try this one on, only because it’s going to my BFF Shana. She just had surgery to remove a bunch of metal from her leg (she got into a fight with a vacuum hose and lost), so I thought she deserved some nice wooly goodness for her noggin.

Oh! Forgot to mention, this hat didn’t take up the whole 167yd skein, because I had a good chunk of it left. So that would make this hat a great one-skein project. And because it took ME two days, that means it’ll probably take the average knitter a day, because, well, I am slow. LOL.

Enjoy!

WIP mode.

Delicious cables, although in this picture, it looks more like seafoam. Stupid iPhone camera.

HAH, and now it looks more blue. I can’t win.

4-way view on my wighead, Thelma.

finished object project knitting cables hat cap karma