A scarf and a hat

The Overdue hat now looks like a hat. I still need to add the ear flaps and tuck in ends but the end is in sight. I might still need to rip out the top and reknit it so the hat is a big longer but I'm hoping that the ear flaps will save me from having to do this.

If I'm not that enthusiastic about this project it is not because of the pattern (though the errors don't help) but rather because of my poor track record with hats. Aside from the hats I knit for Christmas this year I have never had a hat turn out just right. My favorite green and white mosaic hat only fit properly after I cut off the ribbing and reknit with the yarn doubled. I knit a hat last year for Ken but then had to rip it all out because it was too tight. The second time I knit it it also came out too tight, though I still hope to salvage it through blocking and perhaps reknitting the ribbing. I followed this hat up with another in a similar design which is disastrously huge and has very odd decreases at the top.

Knitting hats, especially for Ken, gives me a sense of certain doom. You can imagine how I feel about a densely cabled hat with less stretch than a normal knit cap. Doomed, doomed. I knit on regardless.

As a break from the Overdue hat of doom I started knitting myself a can't fail scarf of softness. Four years ago, I knit my two best friends scarfs using a brioche stitch pattern I found in a 1940s pattern for a snood. I used a couple of skeins of beautiful Manos for each and they turned out lovely and thick. Since I was looking for something easy as a break from the hat I decided to make myself a scarf using the same stitch pattern but different yarn. When I was in Montreal for Christmas this year I bought myself a beautiful skein of red Handmaiden Casbah (80% Merino, 10% Cashmere, 10% Nylon). When I bought it I was thinking of making a scarf of some sort out of it. I didn't realize until I checked Ravelry that it was meant as a sock yarn. This knowledge didn't change my mind about using it for a scarf, though, because it is just too lovely and soft to use for socks. So now I am knitting it up with some of my handspun Shetland to make sure I get a long-enough scarf. Next post I'll share the stitch pattern.