FO: Llama hat

I broke my rule about posting every two weeks again. In my defence, we are getting work done on the house, and had to move everything from the front to the back, and have been without internet for a week. (Our first night sleeping in the back of the house someone broke in. I got out of bed and meandered into the room he was in because I thought the noise might be my brother in need of a torch. It's sort of funny, because the last time someone broke in, I also encountered them, so while twice in six years isn't highly frequent, it's two for two. And by "funny", I mean "Stop breaking into my house." My other useful skills in the whole house-moving endeavour include "Not being afraid of spiders" and "Owning a torch." They make up for my inability to reach high shelves, or lift very heavy things.)

A friend I used to work with requested a hat for the harsh Winter months. When I asked him if he had anything in mind, he said he used to have a llama hat that he loved and lost. I searched Ravelry and showed him this pattern, and he said that it was perfect, but then said to disregard that part and just take whatever creative license I could come up with myself.

NOPE. LLAMA HAT.

I made a few modifications to the pattern. I didn't include the earflaps, because the recipient didn't want them. I knit the brim in five rows of p1k1 rib, to avoid stockinette curl. I knit the orange bands above and below the llama pattern with an extra row, because I thought the hat was going to turn out short. I was wrong, but wasn't going to rip out all that fair-isle to correct that mistake, so I went with it. (Pro-tip: Don't space out while knitting fair-isle in the round, or ever. It will not end well.) I also left out the 'Pattern No.1' from the pattern, as the crown decrease began five rows before the end and I didn't want it to be point, so I started it ten rows from the end, decreasing eight stitches per row, and left a plain knit row between each.

I knit this with Rico Design Essentials Soft Merino Aran. I generally much prefer bulky yarn for hats, because I'm suspicious of aran yarn's ability to be properly warm, but this does the job very well. This opens up worlds of yarn-related possibilities!

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I sold at my second craft fair yesterday, and it went very well! (I got the first sale of the day, not that it's a competition or anything.) Two of my friends dropped by with their four-year-old, and he had great fun trying things on and admiring himself in the mirror I had the presence of mind to bring. Far and away the most adorable of customers. I misidentified his face-paint as Spiderman, when in fact it was Rocket Boy from Eddie Rocket's (it was mostly blue with only a little red and no black, so that counts against me, but I was thrown by his Spiderman hoodie). I'm pretty sure this means that I'm old and no longer with it. On the plus side, embracing being an old woman means it is socially acceptable for me to force-feed people.