2021 - Year of the Hat?

So far this year, the only thing that seems to fall off my knitting needles is hats. As the end of the previous presidential administration hurtled toward a dramatic and impossibly stressful close, I found myself uninterested in anything complicated. So after finishing a reversible Felici hat, I simply cast on another. I used the Meridian colorway on both sides, but worked helix stripes with other Felici leftovers. I picked blue-ish for one side and red-ish for the other. Here is the result (remember, this is one hat with a double thickness of fabric):

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I made this hat a little bigger than the previous one - the CO number is 144. It looks great! This hat hasn't quite found its owner yet. 

By the time January 23 rolled around (post-inauguration), I felt I was ready for something slightly more zippy. I purchased the Imperceptions (Ravelry link) hat pattern collection a few months ago, and I was itching to try one of these designs. Woolly Wormhead is known for her clever hat designs, and this is no exception. There are 5 patterns in the collection, each with a different type of labyrinthine design.

The pattern calls for fingering or light sport weight yarn. I started swatching with some leftover Elsbeth Lavold Silky Wool, but it wasn't quite right. So I went to the sock yarn cabinet and picked out two shades of blue with high contrast. The bright blue is left over from Dave's sheep socks (it was the sky), and the dark blue was used in my On the Spice Market shawl. I loved working with these yarns again.

I made Daedalus, which seems to be the first pattern in the collection (but I'm not 100% sure about that). The design is worked with stranded colorwork, and you can see that often there are as many as 15 stitches of the same color in a round. This means one has to catch the floats on the reverse so you don't end up with big loops that catch on things on the inside of the hat. Woolly includes instructions for catching floats without twisting the yarns. I'm pretty sure this is a technique I've learned in a class before, but I didn't use it enough to lock it in. This project really helped me lock it in! 

One alarming thing happened while I was knitting: I found some telltale breaks and gnawed spots in the dark blue yarn. This is a sign of the DREADED CARPET BEETLE. 

I found no carcasses or actual bugs, though. Also, I didn't pay attention to which ziploc bag the yarn came out of, so I have no idea which yarns to treat with extra suspicion in the future. As soon as I finished the hat (which only took 6 days), I put it - and the remaining yarn - in the freezer for a few days. 

I'm not truly worried about an outbreak, but coming across one of these breaks is so disappointing. I think that from now on, whenever I use a ball of sock yarn that is already wound into a cake, I will re-wind it prior to working with it. This will help me gauge whether there has been insect activity. 

I really enjoyed this project and intend to make others in the collection. Daedalus only took about a third of a skein in each color, and I used leftovers - I can do that again. The only thing holding me back is a little experiment I've been doing. This is going to come as a shock so sit down.

Friends, I have not knit a single stitch in the last 8 days.

I've been having more pain in my right arm, and I decided to take a break to see if it helped. I know that mousing at my computer is the real problem, but knitting uses the same muscles. I can't quit computing as it's a huge part of my job, but I can take a break from knitting. Has it worked? So far, no - but I've also shoveled snow several times during the past week, which strains the same muscles. So I don't know if this will have any healing effect or not.

In the meantime, I've been spinning every day - but not to excess. I've been gathering materials for the Yarnworker Winter WAL, including printing and reading the pattern and winding my yarn (warping begins on 2/11!). I've been reading a lot. And sometimes, I just watch TV... without doing anything with my hands at the same time. This is really unusual and it has taken me some time to get used to it.