Persistent Knitter

A long time ago, I learned to spin yarn.  I learned how, bought a beautiful spinning wheel (the Schacht double treadle). It even has a small lightening bolt on the very front of it. 

The only thing I’ve ever knit from my own handspun was a hat.  I wore it for about a year (only occasionally as it’s super bulky weight yarn and it doesn’t get that cold here that often).  I was never completely pleased with how the top of it looked.  A few weeks ago, I decided that I just had to rip it out and start over. Well, not quite completely start over.  I didn’t rip all the way down to the cast on. I did make the ribbing on it shorter, and wanted to redo the decreases at the top.

I redid them, almost the same way I did the first time.  Gee, big suprise - I wasn’t pleased with it!  So I ripped it out again (not quite as far), and then set it aside for a bit. Not totally aside, as it was out on my kitchen counter without needles in it for a day or five. 

I just finished the hat, for the third time, and VOILA! I love it!

The ribbing is about half what it was before.  I’m still not totally happy that it doesn’t turn where I want it to.  Does anyone have a good way of forcing a turning row when moving from ribbing to stockinette?

But the best part of the hat now is the top:

BEUUUUUUUUUUUUTIFUL!

I’m so pleased.

What did I do different?

The first two times through, I sort of followed the pattern in The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns.  It has you basically knit a tube until it’s long enough and then do a lot of decreases really really fast.  This looked horrible in the big yarn. 

The third (and successful time) through, I started my decreases much sooner. I was doing k6 k2tog around, then a plain row, k5 k2tog around, plain row,  and so on. Until I got to k1 k2 tog. I then switched to smaller needles**, and did k2tog around.  Once I had like 6 stitches or so left, I took the first two stitches and put one over the other (without knitting any) like a decrease, and the same with the next two stitches. Then I had three stitches left (don’t check my math, I’m guestimating) and ran the yarn through all three, securing the tail on the underside of the hat.

** Since I know Joann will ask, when I first made the hat, YES I had to buy needles.  This time around, I didn’t :)