03-09-2020

So this pattern is tagged as adult or teen, but the unstretched circumference is smaller than the child size of Andrea Mowry’s Shiftalong. I’m currently 1/4 of the way into the chart, and it seems so tiny. I have a feeling I need to frog it and start over, adding an additional pattern repeat.

05-17-2020

So I didn’t frog it. And the circumference actually turned out fine. But, boy howdy, did I have drama with the length.

I finished up the hat on March 14, and it felt short. It fit… but only just. I felt like I had to keep tugging it down around my ears. It was a gift to be sent along with my next project, so I sat on it for a while deciding what to do.

I ended up thinking to myself, “why not just take out the cast-on edge, and knit the rib down longer in reverse for another inch? That seems straightforward enough.”

I am here today to tell you: DO NOT DO THIS THING. THIS IS A BAD IDEA AND WILL MAKE YOU HATE THE WORLD. If it was stockinette, sure, go to town. But a rib? Nope. Just nope. First of all, you can’t pull out the bottom of a rib like you can with stockinette. The yarn loops through with a twist, and it’s miserable to undo. (On the plus side, I’ll never worry about a rib unraveling from the bottom again. That thing is not going anywhere.)

So at this point, I’ve taken out the cast on, and I can’t “just knit it” backwards. I’m in too deep. I have to solve this now. The solution I decided on was to take the leftover yarn and re-cast-on and knit the additional rib length as a second piece. Then, using a yarn needle, weave the last row in by hand to the rest of the hat, making a seamless connection as though none of this had eeevvveeeerrrr happened. Once again, this ended up being a much bigger pain to do in practice, but with a lot of patience and perseverance, it did in fact create a seamless join. There is one stitch I found where I looped something backwards, but literally no one will ever notice it but me.

My last fear was that I would go through all this struggle, and it wouldn’t have made a difference on the fit. But lo! It made all the difference in the world. It looks and fits great, and was definitely worth the frustration. I doubt I will ever use this pattern again, but I’m very pleased with how it turned out. While writing this, I realized I totally forgot the pompom on top, but you know what? It doesn’t need it, and the package is already boxed up with a shipping label!

Total time: 22 hrs, 50 min*

*excludes second cast on, rib, and joining of the pieces.