It’s finally feeling autumnal, and I want to knit something!

The yarn is some I dyed myself (using food dyes). I actually don’t know which version of “I Love This Wool” it is, but that shouldn’t matter. It started off as cream, and I overdyed with yellow for a tonal effect.

Cast on 96 sts on a size 6 needle, long-tail cast-on. Using magic loop method through the whole hat. Will switch up to a size 7 needle after the brim.

Ach! This hat has been much more work than it should’ve been!

I was just a round or so from starting the decrease chart and took a progress photo for my craft blog-- when I spotted a mistake. One of the twisted stitches was twisted in the wrong direction. Then I looked at the other side and found another stitch leaning the wrong way!

The hat was obviously still wearable, but I was disappointed and wanted to fix those two stitches-- however I was scared about dropping down the fix something some many rounds down the pattern, because the way these stitches work, I thought it might end up being a huge mess.

I asked for advice here on Ravelry and got some great tips. Eventually, I decided that the simplest solution (well, other than ignoring the mistakes!) was to work duplicate stitch to hide the boo-boos. (Don’t know why that didn’t occur to me!)

So, I went back to knitting and started the first round of the decrease…

Oops, made a stupid mistake! Missed making one stitch in the first repeat. Easy enough to tink back and start over.

Except something went terribly wrong. Honestly, I don’t even remember what it was, at the moment… I guess it was such a traumatic experience that I’ve blanked it out as a defense mechanism. ;o)

In any event, I ended up just taking the project off the needles and frogging back to the round before my first mistake-- the earliest wrong-leaning twisted stitch. (In for a penny, in for a pound!)

I actually managed to pick up all those stitches again. (Nearly miraculous, but wool makes it easier!) I wasn’t sure I was doing it right. (Was I untwisting stitches somehow? I really don’t know much about the construction and mounting of twisted stitches…) But at least it was possible that it was right… If nothing else, it wasn’t just a puddle of frogged yarn (yet).

So. Before setting it aside for the day, I figured out where I was in the pattern repeat-- or so I thought. Again, I don’t know what happened here. Either I changed the row counter to the wrong number from sheer incompetence-- or I merely (mistakenly) thought I’d changed it the next morning, when I picked it back up.

In any case, some early-Saturday-morning stitching was going very well, until I looked back at my work and realized that I must’ve been knitting the wrong round of the pattern! (!!!)

SIGH. Ok. Let’s tink that round. It was a fairly slow, tedious process-- and then I goofed again (don’t ask) and very nearly threw a hissy fit and ripped the whole darn thing out.

A few deep breaths and the knitting-repair equivalent of a Hail Mary pass later, and I think I’m back on the right path. That may change at any moment.

This hat shouldn’t be this hard to knit!
When I finally finish, it will be worth all the frustration just to say that I didn’t give up.