The Hat Came Back

In January, a young musician came into our music shop wearing a most interesting toque and me being me just had to have it. Well, not have it as in taking it and keeping it, but I did take it to photograph it. And, I did have good intentions of making one just like it, only in a nice warm wool, not a thin, pilly acrylic.but that was not to be. So many other projects shiny nickeled me and I never got around to making it. I had been clearing out old photos from my hard drive the other day, and came across the hat photo, and once again I was a bit interested in creating a look alike. And then today, it was fate.

Well, the hat came back in today (along with the young musician from Napanee) and this time I took another good look at the hat, went into my shop and picked out the colours to match as closely as possible to the original. The colour combination was the thing that caught me. In the photo the colours do not reproduce well - but at the bottom of the hat is a pure black, followed by a bright lime green, then a deep cherry red, then a pale lime green, a dark, almost black sage green, then a cream colour. The colour sequence is repeated twice and the hat is 8 inches long  before the decreases begin and when completed the hat is 10 inches long.

So this evening I cast on 80 stitches and knit a few rows of brioche stitch in the round. Ripped that out! Too big, and I didn't like doing brioche in the round. Cast on 72 stitches, and knit brioche stitch back and forth for a while and decided it was too small. Ripped that out. Then, I sat down with my trusty calculator and determined 79 stitches for the cast on would be the appropriate number. Although it is just one less than the original, the 79 includes 2 selvedge stitches, and with the seam it would be more like a 76 stitch hat. 

Now, after 3 colours have been knit (black, bright lime and red) and a few rows into the light lime, I can see the hat might fit just a little loose for my head but will certainly fit most of the other people I know. 

A worsted weight wool was chosen - Ella Rae Classic - as I felt I wanted to knit something else in my lifetime. The original hat was knit in yarn that was thinner than dental floss, and must have over 300 stitches in the cast on, with each colour stripe having over 20 rows. Let's multiply that out - 12 colour stripes times 300 is 3,600 stitches times 20 rows. That is approximately 72,000 stitches! For a hat! And this one was a double knit so it really was twice that number. 

I can knit 45 stitches a minute (don't ask how I know) but brioche takes longer. One row of 79 stitches takes 4 minutes. 120 rows times 4 minutes equals 8 hours. Add an hour for seaming and weaving in ends, and another hour for good measure and you have a 10 hour hat. That's a week's worth of knitting for one hat/

If I had my camera at home, I could show you a progress shot. While my creation doesn't really look like the original, the colour combo is fabulous. And quite masculine. A girlie edition could be created by replacing the deep red with a vibrant hot pink. Hmmm. I guess I'll be knitting two of these. How cute they would be on a young couple. Or maybe 4 of them in different sizes for a certain young couple and their two children. Or maybe I'll have to knit 8. No, wait, 4, plus 4, plus 2, plus 2, plus 2. That's 14 hats - and that's only enough for my family. That's a lot of knitting. 14 times 8 is 112 hours. That's almost 3 weeks working full time. 

Quite possibly, I won't be liking this hat so much in a month or so.