Just to prove I'm human . . .

I decided a while back, to knit a hat for the boy. See, I had this purple yarn that I'd bought thinking it was bluer than it turned out to be, and his favorite colors happen to be purple and yellow. So I scrounged up some yellow from my basket, and started a striped hat. I followed the directions from my copy of The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns which seemed pretty sensible to me. I knit a gauge swatch, counted my stitches, and cast on. Now, I decided pretty early to change the decreases for the crown of the hat, because I wanted to make one that lay flat on the head, no ripples or gathered sections. That's probably where my problems started. Not that the top of the hat wasn't gorgeous . . .


In fact I'm pretty proud of it. But the hat is a bit shallow, and a little bit slack, even on both the boy's head and mine (he's a 23" head, I'm 23 1/2"), and it developed a bit of a bucket-like habit after I blocked it.



Now, I've worn it, it works ok. He's worn it, and says he will wear it again, but I'm going to try this hat thing again. This time, I'll use a few less stitches, use smaller needles to knit the lining around the bottom, and knit a bit further before I decrease. That should do the trick. And from now on, I'll put a little more time and effort into the gauge swatch - I did kinda cheat it. Shame on me.