Inca Hat
Recipient: Baby Sperling
Designer: Zoe Mellor
Pattern: Inca Hat
Source: Double Knits
Completed: February 15, 2006
Colours: Brown/burgundy, black, cream and forest green
Yarn: Brown/burgundy, black and forest green: Innovation acrylic/nylon blend; cream: Zellers 100% acrylic, all sportweight
Ungiven status: To give to my mom to send in package - baby due sometime in 2006
Pictures:
completed hat
side view, showing my hand for scale
- 2006-Feb-15
- A few weeks ago, my mom told me the news that one of my cousins is expecting again. (Said cousin's first baby got this.) I've been musing about whether I would knit anything for this new baby, and if so, what it would be. Yesterday, on the spur of the moment, I decided to make the 'Inca Hat' pattern from Zoe Mellor's 'Double Knits book, which I picked up not too long ago. This hat is one of the nicest patterns in the book, I think. I used earth tones for the colourway - a brownish burgundy as the main colour, black to complement, and cream and forest green as accents.
Now, I know I promised to cut down a little on my tendency to knit for every baby which crosses my path, but I had two very good justifications reasons to make something for this baby. For one, I've just catapulted myself a week ahead of schedule by cancelling my mittens project, to say nothing of all the other projects which are ahead of schedule. And, probably more compellingly, baby hats are small.
Don't believe me? Ha! Doubting fool! It is absolutely a small project! How do I know? Because, well...it's finished. I like it.
Unfortunately, I had 'issues' with the pattern. Some were me being really dumb. Some were not. For example, the chart for the body of the hat claims that it has a six-stitch repeat. It does not. If you try to repeat the six stitches indicated throughout the entire chart, the main section of the pattern will look okay but the bottom will screw up totally. (Fortunately I clued into this before starting.) Another issue I had was with the instructions immediately following the completion of the earflaps. The pattern tells you to cast on some stitches, then purl across earflap #1, then cast on some more stitches, then purl across earflap #2, then cast on some more stitches, and - voilà - you have cast on the bottom edge of the hat.
See the problem?
Nowhere does it say which side of the earflaps is supposed to be facing you as you purl across them. Now, because this is a fair isle hat done in stocking stitch, and because the instructions said to purl across the flaps, I assumed that the wrong side of the earflaps should have been facing me as I purled. Another big clue (which I didn't notice until after the fact) is that the instructions for the next row after this say RS. But I'm betting that new knitters would not necessarily get that. And my own paranoia that I might be purling on the incorrect side fooled me into thinking that I'd done it wrong, ripping it out, cursing when I found I'd done it the right way in the first place, and then redoing it. (Okay, that was my bad...but still...if the instructions had been clear in the first place, my stupidity might have been kept at bay.)
Anyway, my point is...Not. Well. Detailed. Instructions.
Aside from that, the pattern is, as I'm sure you can see, extremely cute, and I really appreciated getting more practice carrying yarn in my left hand due to the fair isle nature of the design. I also discovered that this strand-in-each-hand thing makes doing a three-colour row waaaay easier.
Conclusion: I would totally make this hat again. But next time I will do it in the round. There's just no excuse not to.
