This hat was my first foray into stranded (two-color) knitting, and I'm going to call it a success. I was fairly competent with the whole knitting-with-both-hands-at-the-same-time thing, but my technique was shot every time I need to twist the yarns together to prevent long floats. (Explanation for non-knitters: If there is a run of stitches just in one color, you have to twist the yarns over each other in the back so that there isn't a long strand of the opposite color on the back, since it could get caught on something. Like your ear.) I'm sure there's a way to handle the yarns for this, but that epiphany has yet to come to me.
The pattern is free and can be found here. I noticed that a lot people did not knit the whole chart, since the resulting hat would be super tall. I can't remember what row I started on, but I'm guessing it was somewhere around 20. You can see how the bottom of the first row of diamond shapes has been cut off. I wasn't a huge fan of the top decreases, since they resulted in a decidedly pointy shape.You may be saying to yourself, "But Sarah, you have been complaining for months about how this hat was going to be too small, and yet you have managed to get it onto your head!" Ok, you probably aren't saying that, but yes, I have been complaining that the hat was too small. What you can't see in the pictures is the nice firm hug the hat is giving to my head. It did grow a little in blocking, but it will need to stretch out a bit more to be officially comfortable.
Oh yarn, someone always asks about yarn. The yarn is 100% wool and was a gift from a friend traveling through Finland. I'm pretty sure the label is somewhere on the floor of my trailer in Yellowstone, so that's as about specific as I can get. I used a size 4 needle, but I probably should have gone up to a 5 to eliminate the head squeeze of death.
