A quick FO

Knitted Newborn Hat

Yarn: Caron Simply Soft Tweed (96% acrylic, 4% rayon; worsted weight)
Color: White and Grape
Needles: US 8 dpns
Stitches: 54

I've done shockingly little knitting in the past week. Too busy, too tired...you know how it goes.

A baby project is a good cure for instant FO gratification, so last night I went searching for yarn to make a couple gifts for Ruth's new bundle of joy. It took more browsing than I expected to find the colors she likes--c'mon mass retailers, are purple and orange that uncommon?--but eventually I found some that I liked.

I forgot to get metal dpns, although I didn't know at the time that I would need them. I intended to knit the hat with my Knit Picks Options, but as I would discover, the cables are too long. I checked my FO info and saw that I previously made this same pattern on dpns, not circs. Bamboo US 8 dpns were all I had. I think that bamboo has been slowing me down, so I
held off knitting until I could purchase some metal needles today.

I was happy to find that I haven't forgotten how to do the long tail cast on. Until now every hat I've made had the same cast on I learned at my first lesson. That explains why all those hats haven't been as stretchy for that cast on row. (See, socks taught me a good lesson.)

After a couple false starts, including one when I knit the tail, I got on track and whipped out this FO in no time. The last time I knitted this hat I didn't account for the differences in knitting flat versus in the round. While it hardly took a rocket scientist to make the proper adjustments, I'm happy that I figured out what I needed to do. I'd rather not have as many stitches on the needles to draw up as the pattern suggests, so I made another alteration to the pattern. I added two more decrease rows following the natural order of stitch reduction indicated in it.

The next challenge: finding time to knit during what will be an insanely busy week.