Monday, January 29, 2007

They Might Be Pirates

Here is the completed hat, We Call Them Pirates, from HelloYarn.



This was a study in yarn dominance. Often I don't really understand a knitting concept until I've tried it, and learning knitting is a very tactile experience for me. I have a hard time conceptualizing the process outside of my actual hands. I'd read about yarn dominance, but until I saw my little pirate heads fading into the background on the first few rounds of the pattern on this hat I didn't really GET it.

Some after-the-fact embroidery around the base of this hat obscures the issue somewhat, but close examination might reveal a change from first pirates to subsequent pirates after I switched the cc to my left hand. That's counterintuitive for me because my right hand is elsewise quite dominant.

All said, the pirates turned out swimmingly. Many thanks to Hello Yarn for the clever (and free!) pattern.

FINAL SPECS:
PATTERN: see link above
YARN: Classic Elite Princess (I love this yarn!) in black, and a white merino of similar weight I had lying around the stash
NEEDLES: U.S. #3 Addi Turbo circular
MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant. I did not decrease any stitches for the hem and instead just knitted, after the turning row of purls, an inch and a half or so of stockinette rounds in my super soft Princess and tacked down the live stitches two at a time.
IN HINDSIGHT: I noticed that even after correcting for yarn submissiveness in the first few rounds, the white still fades into the black in the middle of the border separations between the four pattern sections of the hat. In Hello Yarn's photo of her finished hat there are two white stitches followed by one black, whereas the pattern has two black followed by one white. I think in the future I'd try the former instead for a cleaner line

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