"Jennifer has potential, but has problems following directions...."

.... says more teacher comment/report cards than I care to discuss from my stay in public institutions.

(Pat, thank you for the positive thoughts on my knitting. This post, is dedicated to you. Enjoy.)

So I have a friend in Michigan who has the loveliest Icelandic sheep in 48 states and 3 countries. And the best smelling as well, she has a lavender farm. Go look, I'll wait. See what I mean? Anyways, she knits these wonderful felted hats, large brim, fancy shmancy - she puts great buttons or effects on them etc. Anyways, I wanted to be that talented and so she graciously shared the directions. They were straightforward. I could so do this. I got yarn, I got needles, and I started following directions. Well, sorta. You see, I had the same yarn she used with awesome results but just wanted to knit a 'test hat' so I got guage using 3 strands of 'Car Cozy' (which still needs a new name chosen - I haven't forgotten). No problem.

Now, I've knit felted hats in the past, lots actually (but just your basic rolled brim hat felted with not much brim or shaping) with no problems. So, when I started reading the cast/on number I was stunned. It was way more than I expected. It couldn't possibly be right. I cast on the smallest number for the smallest size, and started knitting. This was huge. I looked ahead in the pattern and saw all sorts of directions that made no sense including increases and decreases in places that really shouldn't matter. Obviously I was going to have to edit things. My friend must have misunderstood what pattern I was wanting. So, on about row 15, I started decreasing down to the largest size of MY pattern I usuually made, hoping to salvage this hat. I have also in the past started my decrease point a bit to early, so I used the pattern direction for 'guidance' on how many rows to knit before beginning the decreases for the crown. I noted that the decrease/crown rows in the pattern were also sadly bizarre and obviously not going to produce the desired hat shape and so I skipped that as well, and used my own good judgement on that section as well.

So without further ado Pat, I give you my felted hat.

Here it is after knitting. The marker is for scale, it's a regular ol' whiteboard marker. The color changes look better felted, that's expected.

It seems a bit big to me, but the hat was supposed to have more brim than the ones I normally knit, and felting solves a lot of problems... right?

I somehow couldn't find the next picture this morning, (lost to the laptop crash) but suffice it to say that it came out of the wash flat. Like a frisbee, flat. No 'hat' shaping at all. Pancake. So, I took some of the gray yarn used to knit it, and pinched in four corners and felted it again.

It does look a little better in person, I felted it again and used it at Rhinebeck to display cobweb weight yarn skeins. That picture is missing as well... oh well.