21-06-2020

This really isn’t TV knitting (even by my somewhat optimistic standards!) I found myself undoing stripes multiple times after failing to make stitches and coming out with the wrong stitch count after the decrease rows… Watching “Ashes to Ashes” wasn’t a wise move, in retrospect.

Knitting this pattern in the round and in stripes wasn’t a good move either, since I ended up with a visible gape on the colour-change stitch that had to be sewn up anyway; trying to work in the ends as I went didn’t pull them tight enough, even though I moved the start of the round so that it didn’t fall on the gap between needles. And the nature of the pattern meant that the markers I tried to put in kept moving; the only safe place for the markers, with hindsight, would have been in the centre of the decreases.

Working the hat as written, in the flat, would have made more sense and been a lot less fiddly - it certainly wouldn’t have involved any more sewing up afterwards!

And the oatmeal wool wasn’t a good choice. It’s definitely a thicker DK than the others, and the lace pattern doesn’t show up well on these fine needles - and using it for the brim meant that the resulting stiff edge was reluctant to ‘wave’ properly. It’s a nice colour combination, but again with hindsight it would have been better to have substituted the cream wool that I discarded instead for being too light.

However, the completed hat looks nice in stripes once dried out (I couldn’t steam-block it when knitted in the round either, so resorted to squeezing it out vigorously in hot water to try to even things up a bit). And the doll won’t know any different.

20-06-2020

Oops. Just realised I’ve been misreading the pattern through all my attempts; it’s four decreases and four increases, but the increases take place over only three stitches (there’s an extra one after the third stitch). No wonder my stitch counts don’t add up.
It should be an eleven-stitch repeat over 55 stitches.

19-06-2020

Decided to work this in the round, in stripes, since I don’t have any wool with long colour changes and I like the effect produced by the hats that do!
I think I’ll leave out the cream (as versus the lemon yellow) wool shown in the sample piece, though - it’s really too lightweight compared to the other colours, and with six stripes of 4 rows each there is barely room for the colours to repeat at all.