Chez Aristote

I keep making hats. I keep not wanting to pick them up as I walk out the door. Till now?

In the winter, there’s always a pile of more or less guilty handmade hats, chilling by the door. I pick the least evil and run out. Then the next day I try to make another hat, often (for some reason) at cocktail parties which can be boring (when everyone’s a lawyer). So the routine is to make more hats, some better, some worse. Most just not quite right. And none that I really have wanted to take day after day into the cold, confident in the knowledge that I won’t look goofy.

Two of my more recent attempts were noteworthy, though not The Right Hat; I’ve been experimenting with a few beret-like things:

I really wanted a shaped bramble-stitch hat, kind of Russian-y, so I tried this one Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk aran, a very shiny black. But even though I tried two different crowns, purled for the decreases, I never got quite the look I wanted. Too tight in the body? Crown too small? Hmm. It was five inches from the brim before decreases, but with this pattern, this makes it still a little short to fit over all my hair. Perhaps one day I’ll try again with some more of this yarn; it’s still hanging in there in terms of sheen, although it is getting rather fuzzy.

Then there’s my seriously floppy purple cashmere hat, Jade Sapphire 4-ply; in this, the never ending season of the floppy beret, it certainly competes, with six inches before decreases. Why doesn’t it look as cool as some store-bought ones I see on the Metro? Maybe I don’t have quite the head for the flop. Also I’m always afraid it’s going to fall off.

Certainly I’m finicky. And perhaps more than finicky–bad at being satisfied? Bad at letting the material win, as it always will?

Well, this time I used material I’d already set in order myself, yarn spun from a solitary 2 oz. batt, purchased long ago from Barneswallow Farms, my favorite Maryland Sheep & Wool vendor. They have no website, alas, but I visit them every year to get Lincoln Cross breed wool, a very shiny, strong, light wool that is not at all expensive, but very hard to find. It’s my favorite thing to knit once I’ve spun it. I had just enough, I thought, to make a hat, if I added stripes of the mustardy Karabella SuperYak I’d used to make Rebekah’s cozy. The colors look really brilliant together, this nice gray blue, mildly fuzzy, with the very dry (and thicker) SuperYak.

I spun the wool at the lowest ratio on my Louet–very light, airy (and the batts are very well prepared, easy to make airy things from); though because of the quality of the wool, strong enough not to fall apart, even when very loose indeed. I had a little tiny bit left tied in a bow, but I think the cat stole it. Then I knit it even more loosely, 3.5 stitches per inch. The gauge swatch looked much better on the purl side–perhaps because of the small halo of fuzz?–so I turned it inside-out once I’d finished. Down to five inches before decreases this time.

Here’s the thing: I actually let myself go and just made up the stripes as I went. Very unlike the habits of knitting I’ve fallen into over the last year, where I have to think everything into the ground before touching needles. And in this instance, it worked–surprisingly well. (Though you can tell I was too lazy to look up how to make the jogs invisible.) The hat looks good, even though hats modeled in August tend to remind me vaguely of shower caps. My yarn is beautiful, and it was really satisfying to knit what I’d spun the day before. Even started it at a cocktail party. Well, a dinner party. (That served Chef Boyardee.) (It really wasn’t so boring.) Will it be the hat I pick up? Time will tell.

Tags: Uncategorized //