Winterthorn

The hat has a name! Over Christmas I conducted exhaustive research into a good name for my pattern (I asked my family). Despite my sister's insistence on "Christmas Hat" or "Blue Christmas Hat" and my Dad's rather unhelpful "White Lightning" and slightly more helpful "White Thorn", I finally settled on Winterthorn. It seems to match the pattern and the colours.

I knitted three test panels in the end. The first was too small (3.25mm) and I didn't love the colours. The second was a better size but I hated the colours. The third was only a partial panel to get the lower border right. Plus I tried out a couple of options for rib. Unfortunately, by the time I got the the rib (and particularly the transition from rib to pattern) I was already rather tipsy on winter pimms so I think I missed some rather obvious stuff. Oh well.

The test knit is now well on its way, mostly because I have done pretty much nothing other than knitting and watching silly christmas family films for the past three days! I'm already at the decreasing and I have learned several things: my tension for continental purling sucks (the  test panel is waaay smaller than the real thing) and I need a LOT more practice at stranding.

I think that before I'm happy with this I'm probably going to have to make another, especially if I can find an interesting self-striping yarn with a nice slow colour change. If so, there will be one less repeat of the rib and that will probably be in 3.25mm.

The real doubt I'm having at the moment is the pattern itself. I was very wary of making it look too busy but now that it's almost done, I'm not sure there's enough detail on it. But I'm determined not to make my mind up until it's all finished. So tomorrow may include buying some 3.5mm DPNs as the circular is getting unwieldy.