Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen

Friends, June got away from me. It's already July! Somehow I only posted twice last month. However, the knitting continued and I now have three more hats to show for it. These are the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth hats I've made in 2021. Maybe I should go for 21 hats in 2021?

First up, I finished the Katara hat in natural shades for my friend Heidi. This is the second time I've knit this Woolly Wormhead design, which represents the element of water. The mushroom-y yarn is BFL, and the cream is Rambouillet - both are handspun:

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm a huge fan of these sideways-knit hats from Woolly Wormhead. She has a new collection of sideways-knit hats called Convergence. These designs incorporate mosaic knitting, which I haven't done before, so maybe I'll try those next? 

My next hat is kind of vivid - you may want to shield your eyes. When going out to eat dinner for the first time post-vaccination, I needed an easy project. I grabbed a skein of super old sock yarn and printed off the one-page cheat sheet for the Sockhead Hat. Frankly, I find this yarn to be UGLY. It looks like IKEA, but in the very worst way. It pools and splashes, but not even in a regular way, and I just find the dye job to be amateurish. I hate it, but my hope is that someone else will love it. It will be a donation!

This yarn came to me in a sock club shipment way back in 2007. I started to knit the pattern it came with, but it was clear that the circumference was too big, so I quit. I've actually had this yarn marked "to trade or sell" on Ravelry for well over a decade, with no takers. It is a merino/nylon/bamboo blend, so it's really slinky. Here's what it looked like when I started making the sock in 2007 - in addition to bad sizing, I felt the lace pattern was completely obscured by the loud yarn. 

While I still have 45 grams of this eye-searing yarn, I am considering it to be "all gone." In fact, I might just toss the remaining ball in the trash can. I wouldn't even want to use it in another future sock yarn blanket.

Hat #13 is much more my style. This one might look familiar, because it is another Woolly Wormhead design that I've knit before. This is Korra, representing the element of balance:

I donated Korra #1 to the Project Gettysburg-Leon annual auction, which was held online this spring due to COVID. I was thrilled that it went for $55. I recognized the name of the family who bought it, and learned that the couple have been fighting over whose hat it is. I offered to make another one, since I still had yarn, and I reversed the color placement this time. Now they can have coordinating his-and-hers hats! 

One thing I appreciate about these Imperceptions hat designs is that you can make them with different weights of yarn. The pattern calls for DK, but honestly, I think DK results in a pretty thick hat. Perhaps if I were using superwash merino DK, the drape would still be there. The Silky Wool I used for Korra is coded "DK" in Ravelry, but I disagree (I think it's skinnier). Here are hats #11 and #13 side by side - you can see a pretty big difference. They are both knit on a 3.0 mm needle: 

All this is to say that I would not hesitate to use sportweight yarn in these patterns. It would probably be fine. Light worsted would probably work, too, as long as it was super drapey. 

I have started Hat #14, but it is not simple or easy. More on that next time, perhaps.