Good Knitting Gone Wrong

Hats are easy - simple, they work up fast and you can have them done in no time...that is...if you know what you want the hat to look like when you're finished...

I believe hats should be like snowflakes, no two the same....so I'm making Hannah Bilau a hat reminiscent of the style of Meaghan Goldman's hat (see below). However, it can't just be exactly the same...that aint right!

So, I get the yarn, which I might add is beautiful. It is called Marigold and was hand dyed by my niece Kelsey Saari...It is a beautiful semi solid with some soft deep yellows in there - gorgeous!!

So, I cast on the appropriate number of stitches and rib for an inch and a half, and decide that aint enough stitches....so I rip the whole thing down to nothing and start again. Perfect I now have the perfect number of rib stitches for the hat to go over a human head! That's always good.

So, I look through my beloved book, A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, and come across "wasp wings"...well I only want one wing and I'm circular so I start rewriting the pattern and add the needed stitches, and go to town....Only problem is is that after one repeat I realize that I only needed 7 stitches not 8 and so each of little half wings is off center.....frogging to the rib!

All right now, I have it all centered up, the problem is...well, I just don't like it!! What does a froggie say?

So, I start flipping those pages again and I come across something I think will be nice, a cabled feather pattern....so I figured out the pattern for circular - seems simple enough and go to town. I get two repeats of the pattern done, and it looks wrong....I look at my pattern and look at the hat and look at the picture in the book....hmmmm....and then with all the brains of a 51 year old woman at 10 at night (yes that's late for me) I think, well there's my problem it's supposed to be a repeat of 18 and I'm only repeating 12 stitches. Can anyone say frogged to the rib.

In the bright dawn of morning and with a second cup of coffee under my belt I get on the computer and chart the thing and that's when I realize that I was repeating 18 stitches. In my tiredness I had neglected to remember that the repeat of one of the sixes had yarn overs in it...

and now I'm wondering if it was right all along and I just wasn't awake enough to know it.