I knitted Father Cables from this yarn. Whilst the boy doesn’t like that particular hat enough to snaffle it - the cables are too elaborate for his taste - but he loves the softness and feel of the yarn. So he wanted something suitably masculine made out of this yarn…

We decided on Antler by Tincan knits. I’ve had this one printed out for ages now waiting for the just the right occasion. Looks like the marriage of this yarn and pattern is set to be it.

So I cast on early in the week and did a few rows of rib and then a few more another day. Then on Saturday 20th whilst manning my stall at a car boot sale (and making a perfectly respectable $8.40 profit after stall cost! - I was selling essentially trash rather than treasure) I finished the rib and worked up about three repeats of the pattern. It was quite a talking point. It still surprises me the reactions you get when you knit in the round on dpns in public. You get elderly people remembering their sock knitting years when everyone knew how to knit a sock and turn a heel. You get bafflement about how do you work with all those extra needles. You get safety admonishments about using all those sharp pointy things and accidentally taking out your own eye whilst cabling…

And then I came home and promptly ripped it all back to the rib. I hadn’t changed needle size from the 4mm used for the band to 5mm as the pattern suggested as my 5mm dpns are only 20 cm long and I find them a little short to work with comfortably and stitches like to commit suicide by jumping off the end of the needles. So I tend to avoid them if I can. But I needed to up the needle size to accommodate the pull-in of the cables. So I came home and started the patterning again on 5 mm. By the end of Saturday I was back to 5 completed repeats. The pattern calls for 8 repeats for the small size but I’m doing 9 as suggested for the large size as the boy likes a really deep slouch to his hats.

This was not promising straight off the needles… Long thin and weird looking. I love what blocking does to this yarn. It makes it bloom and soften till it feels like cashmere. Gorgeous hat in the end.