Things That Are True
I have moved past the ‘serious pondering’ stage of the hat and onto the ‘yarn on needles’ stage. In the process, I’ve learned several things. Among them:
-Heads come in an impressive range of sizes, and people are far less likely to know their head size than their shoe size.
-Hats can reasonably use a much wider range of thicknesses of yarn than socks can. You can totally have a super bulky hat, while socks made in super bulky yarn would be… well…slippers.
-The thicker the yarn, the more gauge seems to matter.
All this led me to take a most unusual step. I knit a gauge swatch — but only sort of. My gauge is different in the round than back and forth, but knitting swatches in the round is soul-suckingly terrible. So I thought I’d just knit some little mitts and call them a swatch. It’s a totally valid choice, as long as you’re prepared to rip them out if you’ve guessed wrong. Along the way, I discovered I need to use a different needle size.
This turns out to be a good thing since someone (someone small, furry, and named Barry) seems to have decided my size three wooden needles are the tastiest treat in all the land. I knew there was a reason I didn’t like wooden needles.
I feel your pain. My little kitty decided it was necessary to chew through an addi cable before I finished the last button band of the project. My bad for leaving the needle laying there, but sheesh! couldn’t she have waited until I was done?!
I LOVE this photo! My furry babies adore me knitting: all that time to sit on me while I am still, and thankfully don’t terrorize the supplies. But I did go through about 3 pairs of bamboo US1s while on a sock yarn fingerless glove jag back in the early days: my tabby baby kept stepping in the knitting basket and snapping the things!