Toque of the town

Toque

Yarn: Knit Picks Andean Silk (55% superfine alpaca, 23% silk, 22% merino wool; worsted weight)
Color: Cranberry
Needles: US 6s
Stitches: 90

The good news is that the ribbed hat is finished.

The bad news is that I may look like a total idiot in it. It would be a fitting conclusion to what was a relatively trouble-free knit until I had to shape the top.

I was feeling pretty good about the work I was doing. I have learned how to read the knitting. From time to time I've lost track of whether I should knit or purl, so this is critical knowledge gained. For the first time I joined balls midway through a row rather than at the end. I was pleased with the ribbing.

I knitted the hat all night until my eyes were tired and I could feel myself working much slower. You know how if you're near completing a book and you decide to stay up and finish even though you're tired? Same thing, except I stopped six rows short of getting to where I needed to begin shaping the top.

It's good that I stopped then because shaping the top was a challenge. I had a lot of difficulty knitting and purling two stitches together. It may have taken me a half hour of drudgery to K2tog, P2tog for ninety stitches. For k2tog I struggled getting the needle into the first stitch, and for p2tog I had trouble getting the needle through the second stitch. The rest of the top shaping went okay until it was time to break the yarn.

This was one of those points of no return. I left a decent amount for a tail, but I had no clue if it would be enough for what I needed. I threaded the yarn through the stitches on the needle twice, took them off the needle and pulled tightly.

Oh no. Two stray stitches on the opposite side were sticking up. I don't know how I missed them. I insist that I didn't, yet there they were. The others were already drawn together, so there was no undoing this. I tried sewing through them to clean it up a little. It looks okay. Plus, this should be on the wrong side, correct?

This right side/wrong side business confuses me more than it should. Pattern directions say one or the other should be facing. Fine, but how do I determine which side is "facing"? Is it the side facing me on the left needle, or is it the side with the just completed row on my right needle? I assume it's the one on the left, but I haven't been able to find an explanation for those dense like me.

With the wrong side facing me, I weaved in the tail to seam the hat together. I think I'm terrible at weaving in ends, but little did I know how bad I would do here. It looked respectable--not good but not awful--on the wrong side. When I turned the hat inside out, it looked like Frankenstein stitching. All right, that's the back of the hat. One side is slightly longer than the other, which is one of those things that will drive me crazy but no one expect knitters will notice. (They'll be wondering what horrific surgery I performed on the back.)

Maybe I'm being too hard on myself. Time to try it on and see what I think. Hmm... It's snug and should be warm. Good. It comes all the way down to my glasses. It's too long in the front. That doesn't look so good. What if I don't like this?

Which brings me to writing this entry. You'll be glad to know that my initial fear stemmed from knitter's remorse. (I just spent all this time making what?!) I've realized that I can slide the back of the hat down some, which makes it look better in the front. The semi-panicked state I was in at the start of this post has mostly passed, but rather than retool everything I've written, I figured I'd keep the spirit in which it was written. I was worried that I made some crucial mistakes near the end, and I'm still mad about how the seam looks on the right side (assuming it actually is the right side).

Since today is Super Bowl Sunday, allow me to make a fearless prediction, almost always wrong for this game, that the Colts will beat the Bears 24-16. Then can the sports commentators please shut up about Peyton Manning not being a great quarterback?