12/10/12 - I’m making this as a surprise gift to my boyfriend, Joel. The truth is, I’d love to make him a sweater because I know he wears those and rarely wears hats, but since we’ve just been dating 4 months, there’s no WAY I’m setting off the curse of the boyfriend sweater! I don’t expect him to wear this often, but even if he just has this awesome hat to wear to Browns games, that’s fine by me! (That’s a lot of exclamation points…can we tell I’m a little in love?) I’m modifying the pattern some so that it says Browns on it, instead of having the Celtic Knot.

I’m naming this project “Browns (Sorta) Rule!)” because Joel was part of a fantastic play that he adored called “Browns Rules”, which was not only about the history of the Browns but also about the rules of being a Browns fan. And I slipped the “sorta” in there because I grew up in Pittsburgh and am a lifelong Steelers fan, so we don’t exactly see eye to eye on who to root for when it comes to football.

This is my first time double knitting! My initial thoughts on it are that it’s a little tricky - I definitely have to look at what I’m doing - but no harder than any other kind of colourwork and actually, it’s probably a little easier to follow along with the pattern and get into a good rhythm with your hands. I’m enjoying holding the two strands of yarn in one hand, and I think the end result is really going to be special.

12/21 - Done! It took me a little while to finish this in large part because I do a lot of knitting while I’m with Joel, and I wanted this to be a surprise! Even if he only ever wears it to the games he goes to, that’ll make me happy. I put “Browns” on it twice, using this wonderful alphabet chart to block it out on graph paper.

So in order to get the words on the hat, I of course had to separate the colours, stop double knitting, and do regular old colourwork. Otherwise (think about it here), the word “Browns” would have been BACKWARDS on one of the sides! So I separated the brown and the orange, went up to size 10 needles (I might have done better going up to 10.5, but as the Yarn Harlot might say, that shit’ll block right out), did Browns on one side and then the other, then reconnected the colours and continued with the double knitting. It is warm and cozy and is going to look great once it’s all blocked. I’m really so excited to pop it in his stocking and surprise him with it on Christmas day. It’s our first Christmas together and really, I couldn’t be more stoked.

This basic pattern was great. I would definitely do it again, maybe even for myself. I rated it a fairly high medium not because it’s difficult but because you really need to pay attention to what you’re doing. It’s a lot of looking and watching.