The Swatch Grew Up

It's been a few days ago, but I finished the Monk Hat.  Can't say who the hat is for (there's going to be a lot of that from here on out to Yule), but I did get Don (the Ponderer) to model for me...

I made this hat with Cascade 220 in 9465.  The color is super hard (for me) to capture, as our camera totally resents doing reds and oranges.  

I made a new ribbing that I think flows into the cables a little better.  I assume the Monk that the hat refers to is Adrian Monk from the TV show, Monk.  Not really sure why I thought that, but since he tends to be a little OCD, and I kind of am, too (really?....Noooo...), that prompted the band change.  I went down 3 needle sizes and cast on for the amount of stitches to make 6 repeats, or 120 stitches.  110 (the original number) stitches will not allow the pattern to flow nicely (damn OCD!). Then, I knit 12 rows, making cables on the 3rd row, and every 4 rows thereafter (3 cable crosses).  Then change to main needle.

Since I have an easier time reading charts, I wrote out a chart.  I figured that it would make things easier to plan when it came time to figure decreases.  The pattern is quite vague in how they're done, but I don't mind messing around until I have something I like.

I knitted along, following the charts for 3 full repeats.

I figured that I would have enough extra wool, since the original pattern requires just 150--200 yards of worsted weight yarn.  So I bit my nails and went for it.


I did chart out my decreases, but do you think I actually followed it?  Nooo.... :)   I thought it would be cute to have the one offset cable to look like a bubble, so I did the thing where you pass the stitches to be decreased back and forth until one remains.  I think I saw this technique in an Alice Starmore book.   It makes a pretty closed cable.

The decreases as the traveling stitches move along happen at a faster rate, and I did them at each end of the traveling pairs.  I think that worked out to 2 stitches per pattern repeat  decreased every round.  Yeah, I should have written that down.  Monk would not approve of that, I'm sure. I tried to engineer the final purled decrease to coincide with the second cable cross after the traveling stitches meet. Then the final decreases happened within the knit stitches.  Then, finish by drawing the yarn tail through the remaining 6 stitches, tie off, and weave in all the ends.

Whew!  It's much easier to do, than to try and explain what was done.  And the stealth knitting continues...