From Yarn Purchase to Blog...

Just over 4 hours. That's got to be a record for me. :) There's even a picture!

So, my daughter has this really cute jacket from Costco. It's a fleece/windbreaker thing, reversible, and it's a really pretty purple fleece, with the windbreaker material being a dark purple floral. I'd take a picture but it desperately needs to be washed. Maybe tomorrow. :) Anyway. We're at that awkward stage of Fall where you don't really need a heavy winter jacket, but a hat can be good, especially when it's windy. I decided I wanted needed to knit her a hat to go with this adorable coat. She and I were out this afternoon, so I swung by the yarn store. We got there just before closing and stumbled upon a SALE. Hmmm. Very interesting.

I found a few different things that would work, color-wise, and settled on a skein of Tahki Torino Bulky, in 228. It was on sale for $4.80, and I came home, pondering hats.

I decided to just make a simplSo recommended gae little hat, and thought about size. I did my usual method of swatching, which is to say, I didn't. I looked at the needle size and gauge on the label: 13 sts over 4" on 10 1/2 (US). I measured my daughter's head: 18.5". I did a little math, and decided to go down a needle size to 10s and make it a bit big for her, and came up with c/o of 66 stitches. I did a few rows (6 or 7) of a twisted rib, 1x1 then switched to stockinette. As I knit, I began to get more and more nervous that I was going to run out of yarn. Now, this is a worry of mine, but I really was getting low. It's a 50g skein, but only 55 yrds. I tried it on my daughte and I think it's going to be a bit big but fine in terms of diamter. Unfortunately, she had to go to bed before I was done so I was definitely winging it for length. I did a sort of off decrease pattern. First, I decreased by 2 stitches, to get down to 64. Then, on the next row, I started decreases in blocks of 8 (so knit 6, k2tog, then knit 5, k2tog, etc.). I did 3 decrease rows in a row, then switched to knitting a row, then decreasing a row, until I was down to 8 stitches. Then I decreased down to 4 stitches and knit a tube long enough to knot. I bound off, knotted the tube, and wove in the other end, and voila! Hat is done! I don't actually know if it fits the girl or not, we'll see tomorrow. (I'll try to get a picture then!)

The yarn is quite nice, very lofty. I think it's a four-ply and it's a bit splitty so you have to take a bit of care when knitting because when you split it, it's pretty noticeable. Oh, and I did cut it pretty close. I cut off a short chunk at the beginning because of a knot, and I didn't end up using that, and I had enough to maybe do 1-2 more rows of the body of the hat. I really hope it's long enough because I really don't want to pull out the top and make it longer.