The Year of the Hat

I hope you had a lovely Christmas. I know I did. It has been surprisingly sunny here in Tacoma for the past week or so, and I have been soaking it up.

And I'm not the only one.

 

 

Predictably, all of my knitting enthusiasm has left me, even as I try to remain motivated to finish WIPs that have been on the needles for quite some time. One of such projects that I did, thankfully, finish was my Molly hat. I cast it on on New Years Day and something in me refused to let this thing drag on into another year.

 

I like the end product well enough.While I am definitely a product-, not process-, oriented knitter, this was a struggle. As most people noted with this hat, there are two separate repeats to keep track of, the waffle stitch and the cable, that aren't written out together in the pattern. I wrote the pattern out in a Word document for myself as many suggested, but I still struggled to keep track of the rows. The 1x1 rib over 120 stitches really tried my patience. It's a great-looking hat, but for me it was a combination of fiddly and boring that lead me to not even pick it up for half the year, and when I did it was only out of a sense of duty to finish it.

 

 

The yarn is Universal Deluxe Worsted that I picked up at my LYS in Ohio. I've seen people suggest this as a cheap workhorse alternative now that Cascade 220 is nearing $10 a skein. I bought it mostly because I liked the mustard yellow color. I find it to be pretty scratchy, moreso than 220. It also had some knots and a few thin spots. All in all, I was not terribly impressed with it.  

 

I'm looking forward to the New Year and the new projects it will bring! What are your plans for 2015?