First Finished Project for the New Year

My first finished project for 2016 was inspired by an "incident" last Monday.  Some of you may have already heard of the incident, but for those of you that haven't, let me just leave this Facebook status of mine here for your amusement...

Well, it's clear I won't win any style awards this morning... After cheerily chatting away to loads of people this morning I got back in the truck and noticed my toque perched crazily on my head making me look either drunk or deranged. Fabulous. Note to self: check mirror before leaving privacy of own vehicle. Also make self a new hat that has less potential for weirdness. Lol

Oh yes.  I'm a style maven I tell you! ha ha! I'm sorry there isn't photographic evidence of the incident - I was far to mortified to do much more than immediately slink drive away from the school as quickly as possible.

So to that end I set to work choosing a new hat pattern.  Being that I'm well on my way to becoming  Dr. Seuss's Bartholomew Cubbins with his 500 hats (according to my Ravelry project pages I've knit 46 hats since joining the site in 2008 - only mine are different, haven't all been for myself and no royalty is being offended by them so far as I know), I had a hard time choosing a pattern.  I narrowed down the list and put it to a poll in two of my Ravelry groups and the clear forerunner ended up being Tin Can Knit's Sitka Spruce.  Fair enough.  It is a lovely pattern, I had it in my library from their 12 Days of Christmas pattern freebies in December, and I certainly had enough choices in worsted weight in my stash to easily make it.  Also, I really like how Tin Can Knits patterns are written. So a new hat, in a new style for a new year.

Getting started!  I do love twisted rib!

All was good.  I selected my yarn, a unknown colour way of Cascade 220 that I don't even remember now why I bought or what I might have used some of it for in the past.  Then I printed off the pattern, grabbed some needles and was merrily on my way.  The twisted rib brim took no time at all and I was eager to start the chart.

Car knitting - never leave home without it!

The chart however might as well have been microscopic for these aging eyeballs.  Panic, disappointment, annoyance and a temptation to give up right there and then ensued.  But then (BF)G calmly suggested I enlarge the chart.  (Why didn't I think of that?!?) So I did by about eleventy billion percent.  Then I colour coded all the stitches in the chart,  grabbed a handful of stitch markers to mark each pattern repeat and I was off to the races.  It was a very soothing knit, truth be told.  The twisted stitches were simple and the chart itself was pretty intuitive for me.  I relaxed into it and had my new hat off the needles and blocking within three days.

Blocking on a dinner plate 

This morning I decided to brave the -35C windchill and I put my hat on to head outside for a  few modelled shots of it.  Apparently, it was not dry.  Within a minute of being out the door there was frost clinging to the fuzzy fibres of the hat.

Frosty morning

I have decided that this colour is impossible to photograph.  It's closest to the colour of the first photo in real life.  Whatever the colour, I'm pretty happy with it and hope that it behaves itself well in public unlike it's predecessor, my purple Snow Squall that was my first project last new years.