we interrupt this pity fest

Let's take a break from the seriousness for a moment (I'll finish the story this time, let's just take a break!)

The endpapers started a bit of a craze around here. This hat had been on my radar for a very long time. Since, 2007, when Adrian of HelloYarn knit a couple. But, my fairisle skills were too low for it, then the mitts became unearthed and I was like a madwomen. Ta-da:

It took me two day to knit and I'm totally in love with it. I have a bunch of knitpicks merino style lying around after a failed attempt to find a color that matched something else, and these two colors go well together. It was nice to work with.

The pattern is pretty well written, but I did mod it a little. Several people have complained about how tall the hat was if knit as written. A common mod is to just remove the first certain number of rows (22 I think) of the pattern. But, that makes the bottom of the hat start mid-way through one of the "diamonds", not at the center of one as written, which I don't really like. I have a thing for symmetry. So, I thought that maybe if I just eliminated the stripe at the start, that it would shorten the pattern enough. I didn't have a third color of yarn anyways.

As I got into it, I realized that it was still going to be too tall. So I re-arragend the decreases to produce what you see here. That made the had just slightly too short. It covered my ears, but would pop off my head. So, I picked up stitches from the bottom, knit 7 rows of corrugated ribbing and another braid and voila. A perfect fit. LOVE!* There might, just might be matching mittens on the needles as well ;)

*seriously, I wore it around the house for days I was so damn proud of myself.