Your Tuque Should Always Match Your Socks

Pattern: Interwoven Cable Hat by Amy O'Dell
Modifications: For gauge. I kept the cable section the same.
Materials: 1/2 skein Fleece Artist Sea Wool
Start Date: October 5, 2007
Finished By: October 13, 2007

I like to use all parts of the skein. This hat is made from yarn leftover from my Secret Knitting Socks and also using a pattern provided by my Secret Pal. I adapted the pattern to use the smaller gauge yarn, but kept the cable section the same width. The cable totally reminds me of the medallion from the Never Ending Story. Something I will always think of when I wear it.

The sea wool works really well for cables. As you can see, the cable section pops up quite nicely with good definition without any need to twist stitches. I didn't twist any stitches because a. I'm not exactly sure which stitches should get twisted and b. I hear it's tough on the wrists to work a lot of twisted stitch.

One challenging bit using this pattern with a thinner gauge yarn was working the top decreases. First I worked the decreases as described and found that I had created a rather odd puffed top tuque. So I ripped it out, figured out how many decreases per round were in the original pattern and then adapted that for my new gauge. The pattern includes specific instructions for decreasing the cable section over a specific number of rows, so I worked the cable as usual until I had that many rows left over in my decreases.

This is much easier to do than I just described. In the pattern the first decrease round has you purl 7 in between decreases, so when I was down to 7 stitches in between decreases, I started following the pattern's decrease rounds. Before that I was only doing decreases on the main part of the hat, not on the cable section.


Here you can see the resulting decreases. The hat still kind of puffs a bit at the top, which I'm not wild about, but I can deal with it.

I'll be well dressed when the snow eventually comes. But here's to hoping it stays far away for a long time like last year.