Life At Villa Boswell

Before Christmas, my husband asked me to knit him a hat.  So, as a way to get him to come with me to Fengari, a great yarn store in Half Moon Bay.  I promised to buy him yarn there to knit him a hat with. The lovely shop is loaded with all kinds of luscious yarns, so after losing myself in exploring for a while, I asked the store owner about a good yarn for a hat.  My husband wanted something warm, but something very soft and not too restrictive on his head. 

The lovely store owner at the shop gave me a free pattern intended to be knit using Crystal Palace "Poof" yarn.  The original pattern (below) is meant for a woman, since it simply uses stockinette stitch from the brim on up, and you roll the brim when you wear it for a "feminine" look.  For a man, you knit the first 2 inches or in a ribbing pattern (K2, P2). 

Results

My husband loved the hat, and it took me about an hour to knit it, so I went out the next day and purchased enough yarn to knit a bunch of Christmas hats for folks.  You can see the results here. I also managed to use 3 other different yarns, once I had gotten the hang of knitting up the hats.

Learnings

Stretch! My giftees loved their hats, but those people who received the Poof hat all complained that the hat stretched over time after repeated wearings.  (I haven’t heard from the other yarn hat receivers, but I suspect it is the same for them.)  Even though the wool/cotton yarn should have allowed the hat to have some give and "return" after wearing, it was not the case.  Next time I do this hat, I’ll use a yarn called Fixation, which is a cotton yarn with elastic built into it.  I’ll use the yarn by itself for the length of the brim, so the brim can roll up and look natural, and then add the fixation for a 2" band around the head, and then return back to the yarn by itself.

Holy Head. I found that when I got to the end of the hat, I would end up with a hole in the knitting, which I’m sure was the result of refusing to switch to double-pointed needles. However, I easily solved this by leaving a longer end tail and simply weaving in the last tail of yarn in such a way as to make up for the hole.

Size Finally, I think the hats ended up just a little bit bigger than intended using the Poof yarn.  For women, I would knit with Size 12 needles using the Poof, but I thought the size 13 worked just fine using other yarn, like the bulky wool and the Crystal Palace Musique.

Speed and Gratification  I find that for myself, knitting hats will probably be my in-between project as a break from larger cardigan and sweater projects.  I find the speed of the process extremely gratifying.  I also decided recently to knit another hat for myself, trying to crochet it…well, it sort of turned out… but that’s another post.