Hats off to my hubby

Or hats on, as the case may be, for being such a good sport. After a few trips out to the backyard in the early hours of the morning so Doppler could take care of business, Paul decided that he did, in fact, want me to knit him a hat with earflaps. This was after telling me over and over that he would never wear such a silly looking hat.

So began our journey through the pattern section of Ravelry to find just the right one. I really wanted to make this one. (Apologies to those of you who may not have a Ravelry account) Paul on the other hand chose a stranded version. Sunday morning I finished the Norwegian Star Earflap Hat for him, and asked if he wanted the tassels off the earflaps. "Why not" was his reply. So I did about 1/2 hour worth of i-cord and figured the hat was complete. Not so. Although the hat fit him perfectly in circumference, it was too long and wanted to slide over his eyebrows, obscuring his vision. The earflaps looked much more like a child's hat ties. Of course, those of you who know Paul, know he put it on, pulled it down as far as he could, and tied those tassels under his chin. LOL wish I had snapped a photo of that!!

Even though the hat hadn't taken me long to make, I really wasn't looking forward to ripping it out to remove rows both at the crown and near the band. Instead, I picked up stitches just below the stranded section and did two ridges of garter stitch, attached the flaps in their proper location with 3 needle bind off on the next round, and did two more ridges of garter stitch. This made the hat fit perfectly. Earflaps right on the ears and all. This time when Paul tried it on, although he was much happier with the fit, he decided that he really did look silly in this style of hat. At that point he told me that if he was going to wear a silly looking hat, he wanted to do it up right, and I should add pompoms to the top and to each of the earflap tassels.

Gotta love a man who not only asks you to knit him something that he feels he will look silly in, but will wear it proudly out in public!






For the record, I don't think he looks that silly. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I don't even need to block the hat. Normally my stranded work needs blocking in a bad way, but this one isn't puckering in the least. All the stitches are lying nicely and look great.

Speaking of stranded knitting needing blocking .....



Isn't it amazing what a little soak in cool water did to the Snail mitten I finished? I'm just about done with the second of the pair, and will move on to another pair of mittens or gloves soon. By the way, once again I have gone completely out of my mind and joined a KAL to make a pair of mittens each month in 2008. (psst, this is on top of joining the 2008 Sweater a Month KAL too)

Even with all this head and hand covering knitting going on, I still managed to do some work on a couple of the bigger projects.

I finished the first of 11 sections of the Aran Tree Skirt. I'm only a few rows into the 2nd section, but the knitting goes quickly, so if I concentrate on this project, it should be done in short order.



I also did another repeat on the Lowry Pullover. I'm finding myself wanting to knit on this more often surprisingly. Since this is a monstrous mutant man sweater, I was sure that progress would go so slowly that I would get bored and it would veg out in the knitting basket. This project may be done sooner than I expected.