Lotus flower moebius hat

Lotus flower moebius hat
Originally uploaded by Loretta.

I guess I did make something else this week. But I'm cheating on the pictures since I made and photographed the same hat in June. The light is never this bright in November. That's the dead giveaway.

Anyway the hat is made from the pattern in Cat Bordhi's A Treasury of Magical Knitting in Classic Elite Lush (which I don't know if they make anymore, but it's an angora/wool blend). I got several skeins of this on clearance in purple at the Fiber Factory in Mesa,AZ while I was there last November for the Manuso Manos workshop.

The pattern knits up really quickly with medium weight yarn on size 9 needles, but be aware that there is an error in the pattern in the book. The p3tog parts of round 6 and 8 are transposed. But if you are paying attention to how the pattern progresses you will spot the error (and the fix for it) right away. This is good because you have to repeat those round three times in the crown of the hat.

For me it's pretty much a one day hat. I did the moebius cast-on in the morning and finished the moebius hat band on the bus on the way to school. Then I started in on the crown pattern before my afternoon class and worked on it on the bus on the way home. Here is my chance to plug my favorite needle set, the Denise Interchangeables. With the Denise set, the switch from moebius knitting on the band to circular knitting on the crown is so much easier. And you don't have to carry around an extra needle. You can also do the smaller part of the top on two circular needles with one Denise set if you use two cords and make sure that the larger (size 9 needles) are on the right-hand needle side of the circ and you can use any of the smaller needles for the left-hand side of each circ. It works to knit with two different size needles because the right-hand needle determines the size of the stitches (if you don't believe me, try it yourself.) Not that I don't have two sets of Denise needles; my old reliable ones from the 80s and the new set that I bought when the new ones came out. With two sets, there's nothing I can't knit on size 5 or above.

I went to sit & knit Tuesday evening at my LYS for the first time in about 6 weeks and finished the hat there, despite much chatting and looking at other people's projects. It only takes one skein of Lush and I have one more left, so I'll probably make another one soon.