My latest adventure- the Washington Heights Hat!

Well, as you may remember from my last post, I was looking to make a hat as winter is upon us in full force here in Milwaukee. I had queued up a bunch of hats on Ravelry, but the one that I just kept coming back to was the Sutro Heights Hat. I felt that the simplicity of the pattern would work well with the yarn I had picked out- Lion Brand Wool-Ease in White/Multi (Sparkly!).

I began on the hat, cast on 85 stitches and began the ribbing. The pattern calls for a worsted weight wool yarn, and size 7 needles. Since the Wool-Ease is 80% acrylic, 20% wool, I knew the blocking was not going to be an option after the hat was finished, so I needed to make sure it fit. To be on the safe side, I went up a needle size, and used a 16" size 8 Harmony Wood Fixed Circular from KnitPicks. The ribbing was somewhat tedious, and I guessed when I got to about an inch.

Per the pattern, I knitted four repeats of the pattern, and began to decrease. All was good, until I got to the last two rows, and I realized I really should have used DPNs to decrease since the cable on the 16" is not long enough to fudge any sort of Magic Loop. It was somewhat of a disaster, but stubbornly, I finished off the last two rows, threaded my tapestry needle and finished up the hat.

I tried it on and immediately noticed a problem: It was too big to be considered a "beanie" and too small to be considered "slouchy." Crap. I looked on ravelry and google and found there's not a good way to "shrink" the Wool-Ease. I put on the hat anyway and mulled over what to do. Finally, I decided in the interest of being a slight perfectionist, that my only real option to avoid being annoyed for the rest of the winter was to rip out the hat so that I could remove some of the rows. I decided to rip back to row 3 of the fourth repeat. After I verified that all of the stitches had made it back on the needles, I doubled checked row #3, and skipped ahead to row #9 to begin the decrease. It seemed to be a better "beanie" size this time around, so I kept going. I finished row 15 in the pattern, and switched from my size 8 circular needle to size 7 DPNs to finish off the hat.

Success! I finished up the hat, wove in the ends and it was the perfect beanie size. Hooray! I now have a hat to wear, and it matches all three of my coats.

As for the name. In the pattern, it is noted that Sutro Heights Park is a park in San Francisco and that's what the hat is named after. Since I've never been to San Francisco, and this hat is to battle the cold cold un-ending Milwaukee winter, I thought it might be clever to name my hat after a Milwaukee neighborhood. I vetoed the Hampton Heights Hat, and named it the Franklin Heights Hat, but then decided on the Washington Heights Hat, named after one of my favorite Milwaukee neighborhoods.

And now, here's the required self-portrait of me with the hat.

I enjoyed this pattern a lot, and I may make it again. Probably not for myself, but possibly for a gift or if I really need another hat. Knowing Milwaukee winters- it's a definite possibility. This was also the first time I knitted from a chart, and I thought it was a lot easier than I expected it to be. I have filet crocheted from a chart before, so that helped. I think knitting this hat from a written pattern might have actually been more confusing, but the chart made it simple. Now, to get printer ink so that I can print out the pattern and keep it in my binder, rather than having to follow along on the computer screen....

Now, I'm trying to decide what my next project should be!