Completing My First Knitted Colorworks Hat

Monday's... Lots of people have a distaste for Monday's, such as Garfield the Cat, a silly fella. My Monday though is looking to be pretty great for one reason. I'm proud to announce that after almost a month’s work on it I have completed my very first colorworks project!

My knitted hat was completed over the weekend and I got it all casted off and sewed together. I can't believe I actually pulled off a colorworks project with only two months knitting experience, a lot of people would have said I was diving in too far ahead but it has paid off immensely. This was, through and throughout, a learning experience for myself and boy did I learn a lot.

As you may of noticed the hat really isn't a beanie hat, it came out pretty big so I guess you could call this a Slouch hat, not a beanie(A beanie slouch?). Despite it not coming like I originally planned I actually love it all the same. Slouches are pretty cool and this hat is comfortable so I'm not disappointed in the size at all. In the future I may have to use smaller needles to get it beanie size. My gauge seems to have loosened up since my dishcloth projects.

I mentioned this before but I used size US 7 (4.5 MM, UK Size 7) so they were the needles I'm used to using and the yarn I used was Caron Simply Soft Solids Chocolate (No Dye Lot) and Caron Simply Soft Solids Bone for the white colorworks. You can check out the project on my Ravelry!

Funny story short this wasn't the original plan or pattern I had in mind for this hat. I was originally going to be a plain no colorworks beanie hat with this repeated pattern going up the hat. I really didn't like how the rib was coming out so I quickly switched it out for the Basic Norwegian Star Hat pattern by Cara Jo Miller. I absolutely loved how the pattern looked online so I took a dive and tried colorworks for the first time.

It was kind of scary, I wasn't sure if I would even accomplish something like this so early in my knitting journey but after a couple of rows I got into a rhythm with the switching of both yarns, it became natural quite quick.

Now the colorwork pattern worked in repeats of 16 so after knitting say brown, white, brown, brown, Ect I would repeat that all the way around until I finished an entire row round. Apparently having a photographic memory like myself comes in real handy for this, after knitting the first repeat I was able to carry on with the rest of the round without ever looking back at the pattern.

I really did shock myself with this hat, I never really had any sticky points until the very last part when I was decreasing and casting off. See I had to knit two the last two of the 16 repeat (I had stitch markers placed after every 16th stitch, don't forget your stitch markers they are a life saver.) then I had to knit the last two stitches together, this is called a knit two together. It's not difficult by any means you just put your needle through both as if to knit one but it can be a bit fiddly and tight. As I continued decreasing it became really tough to keep moving around, I should of switched my needles out for a longer cable but I made do with the cable I had on my needles. I knitted the last couple of rows in a magic loop kind of situation and that helped slightly. 

At the end I really have no idea what happened but I almost lost the entire hat because when I was slipping the stitches onto my darning needle to finish it off I pulled the needle through the stitches completely instead of leaving them on the needle. Yeah I'm still a rookie making rookie mistakes but Mum helped me (I drive her crazy I'm sorry.) and I managed to finish the hat.

Thus ends another project, I feel accomplished but also a bit sad that it's over already. I really enjoyed my time making this hat so I will definitely be making more colorwork hats in the near future. The yarn of this is pretty soft so it feels nice on my head. Really keeps your head and ears warm too because of the size, which is a life saver for me as my ears get really cold. Though I don't know when I'll be able to actually wear the hat because we're still running A/C where I live! Yeah seriously it's the middle of fall and we have to have the A/C on still because of how hot it is still. Well hopefully I get to wear it later on in winter.

This is my hat compared to my Mum's, there's a HUGE size difference. She used the exact same pattern as mine but instead of using size 7s Mum used size 6 needles. We've come to the conclusion it's the yarn I used. If I had used size 6 needles or even size 5 I would of had a more smaller hat. Regardless of the size though I love this hat, it's my very first hat so I will cherish it. Plus slouches are actually really comfortable I realized.

I decided to name the hat the Chocolate Vanilla Star Hat, because well, it reminds me of Chocolate and Vanilla mixed together. Yeah I need to stop thinking about food all the time, haha.

Well I'm down too just three projects again, Chrissie's Blanket, my first pair of socks and this little knitted cozy to put my earbuds in.

I'm currently about to begin the heel flap on my sock. I decided to leave it at 36 rows on the body, it's long enough on my legs now. I actually switched my needles out too if you can tell, no more double pointed needles. I'm now using magic loop and it's a lot easier and less frustrating then DPNs.

Anyway I'm going to be going more indepth on my needle switch on my socks later on this week so stay tuned for that! There may be a video on the way in regards to that.

Oh yeah! While driving around I came across this Auto place that has all these amazing cars such as this really awesome red Corvette.

I'm going to be taking a trip inside the place soon so stay tuned for a future blog where I will be showing off the awesome cars they have here.

So with that all said hope you enjoy your Monday! Did you remember to turn the clocks back one hour? I almost forgot to change all my non automatic clocks back, oops. Tomorrow is the Presidential Election day here in America so that'll be interesting. I won't talk about that stuff on the blog, I don't want to involve politics on here unless I have too but I will say don't forget to go vote if you want to!

See you on the next blog!