Skiff Hat

 I have a new knitted project to show you, a hat this time. This was my project for when I was working on my midterm papers. I wanted something that was interesting as well as small, which wouldn’t be a huge commitment for me, so that when the paper writing business was over, and I had a little more head space, I could jump right into a new project.

I went with the Skiff Hat by Jared Flood. It’s been a while since I did something with cables, and I had been meaning to do something with cables again for a while. I’ve even been queueing some cabled jumpers and cardigans.Skiff has been on my radar for a while. I love the cable pattern on this one, especially on the slouchy version. I’ve seen many versions out there which I really liked so it was about time I made one myself.

I made some changes to the pattern. While browsing through the Ravelry projects, I noticed that many commented that the hat comes out quite big. Since the pattern comes in only one size,  I knew I had to tinker on it a bit myself. This was especially pressing because the yarn I used, Malabrio Rios, tends to grow quite a bit after blocking. I used smaller needles for the ribbing, but more importantly, I left out a whole pattern repeat. I did five pattern repeats, instead of six. I did this for the ribbing as well, so I cast on only 100 stitches. I shortened the brim as well, ribbing until it measured 6 inches.
 

I’ve haven’t knitted any Brooklyn Tweed Patterns for a while. Partly because, while I liked  some of the designs, none of the recent publications really ticked all of my “Fantastic, lets cast this on right away” boxes, at least until the new Wool People collection they released last week. Moreover, in January Vatmoss hit the knitting world,  which meant prices for patterns rose for European knitters.  Most patterns only had a slight price increase, but Brooklyn Tweed patterns, which already was a bit on the expensive side, increased with 1 to 2 euros per pattern, and in some cases even more. I have two minds about this, because on the one hand I think designers should get a fair compensation for their hard work, on the other hand I don’t think that a 2 euro tax increase is going to do that. In any case, it meant that Skiff, for a while at least, was priced at 10 euros, which I find quite a lot for a hat pattern which comes in one size. Luckily, the prices have gone back to their old prices since a while. I don’t know why, but maybe the prices went back when Ravelry started handling the Vatmoss for the patterns.

I took these pictures a week or two ago, on the coldest day of April. It was a fickle day, it was cold and there were showers of rain, hail and even some snow. Just before sundown, we had a dry spell and we quickly headed out to take these photos. When I started knitting this hat, I had expected that the weather might make taking pictures a bit odd, however I expected it to be to warm, rather than a bit on the cold side. …