In Which the Pirate Wasn’t Paying Attention.

You know what would be fun? Making up a colourwork hat pattern by the seat of my pants!

First, I tried a variety of cast-ons to figure out what works best with corrugated ribbing (i.e. doesn’t make it curl up like a pillbug) and discovered a nifty two-colour cast-on that totally works. Then, after the ribbing was done, I decided to line it with the softer KnitPicks Andean Treasure left over from Stef’s armwarmers. Hopefully that doesn’t make the hat too small. If I’d thought of lining it before I started, I would have cast on a few extra stitches to make up for the added thickness.

With the lining folded up and joined in, I got started on the body of the hat. At first I was trying to knit with one strand in each hand, but that was slow and awkward, so I switched to having both strands in my left hand. I even remembered the thing about dominance in stranded colourwork and was super-careful about consistently keeping one yarn to the left and the other to the right. Everything was going so well, and looking so good…

…until I fouled it up, and knit another four rounds before I noticed.

Don’t worry! I can fix this!

But maybe I should use lifelines when I’m knitting things that require me to pay attention?