I needed a break from knitting the "it's going to take forever" cardigan, so I decided to try knitting something that I've been tempted by ever since seeing the pattern on Ravelry - the Inishmore Cap.
Because, you know, a fitted, shaped cap won't be difficult at all, right!?
Surprisingly, it wasn't all that difficult. Yes, it was fiddly with parts of the hat often being set aside on stitch holders/separate needles, and sometimes the thing looked a bit more like a blown up jellyfish with all the spare circular needles hanging from it, but it went really well, and surprisingly fast. Took me from last Friday afternoon to Monday morning to knit it!
Lots of pics of me checking it out from different sides with different lighting, and that's how I found the few small issues with it. Above my left temple there's a bit of a pucker where the top and bottom brim are connected to the body of the hat (probably pulled the yarn a little too snug), and the back of the hat sort of "mushrooms" as Brett puts it. I'm blaming this on the fact that I'm a fairly loose purler, and since the top is knit flat, I think it gained a bit more width than intended.
I used Berroco's Blackstone Tweed in Wintry Mix for the yarn. Super soft, very tweedy, and a bit fuzzy. I knew the risks with this yarn going in - I used it years ago when I took a fair isle hat workshop. This yarn likes to break. It's very fragile. Soft, but fragile - it sort of acts like something you pull out of the dryer lint trap. And sure enough, it snapped twice while working on the project.
Check out the picture below - my reflection in the mirror shows why I'm making the panicked expression. That is way too much pucker going on at the back of the hat. Because of this, and because it could have been a LITTLE more snug around the rim, I decided to try hand-felting the hat. That was last nite. It's drying today, and whenever I decide it's dry enough to try on, I'll see if I felted it enough, or if I need to go back to rubbing the heck out of it while it's in a bowl of hot soapy water. The intention is to shrink it up a bit, and maybe even control the direction of that shrinkage. Finger's crossed!
In the meantime, I'm already considering knitting this cap again, in a different color, perhaps even in a different yarn. We'll see...
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