My second gift hat will be “November”. I’ve modified the chart for this one -- the most significant change is to the crown of the hat where I both reduced the height and changed the pattern to a swirl pattern, similar to the swirls found in Snow Squall.

Journal

2015-10-11: Cast on using GTCO and complete 8 rounds of corrugated ribbing.

2015-10-12: Complete first 10 rounds of chart.

2015-10-13: Complete 18th round.

2015-10-15: Complete 30th round. I have moved into the Finnley Heather section.

2015-10-16: Complete 40th round.

2015-10-17: Complete 48th round, last round before crown decreases.
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Completed crown of hat, stopping at round 64, with 4 stitches remaining in each pattern repeat. I was going to add duplicate stitch highlights in other colors, but I didn’t like the results, so I abandoned the idea.
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Ends woven in and blocking….

Summary

• I am knitting 8 rounds of corrugated rib instead of 6. I like the way 8 looks.

• Starting weights: silver- 43.6 gr; asphalt heather- 50.6 gr; brass heather- 49.6 gr; marble heather- 50.9 gr; rooibos heather- 50.2 gr; masala- 51.3 gr; finnley heather- 49.5; ash- 53.3 gr

• I was going to use silver & marble heather for my clouds, but I didn’t like the look, so I switched out the marble heather for ash.

• The chart is a little difficult to interpret, since it has subtle grays that are difficult to distinguish. (These look like part of the pattern, but its possibly just an artifact of the pdf/image process.) I charted this one myself to get some clarity in the chart colors so I won’t miss any of the color changes while knitting. I liked the color changes that I saw so, I kept them.

• I’m using 4 shades of gray instead of 3. I am starting the tree background with silver and then moving to finnley heather in the middle of the trees. the trees are asphalt heather. The upper section will be silver & ash. I have shortened the hat. I replaced the top pattern with a spiral pattern reminiscent Snow Squall. I have modified the leaf rows so that there are only 3 colors to a row. My goal was to remove as many 4 color rows as possible. I think i ended up with 7 four color rounds. I have adjusted a few tree branches at the top of the trees to work my new design for the hat crown.

First Time

• Stranding with 4 colors. Don’t think I’d go beyond 4 colors. 3 works pretty well, but 4 colors makes for a pretty thick float.