The Saga of How Lion Brand Hats Done Me Wrong.

Trudging through the 89F October heat, it came to me: a hat. A hat like this:

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Grumblings and malaise and funk is basically what I'm feeling these days with regard to the doing stuff. Why do stuff when I could sit here and fidget and feel bored?

But finally I cast on the hat, despite the four projects on the needles and one that it's practically criminal that I haven't started yet. The one reason I was able to cast on was the thought, maybe I can finish it in one night! That's the attention span we're dealing with here.

It started strong. Yarn, needles, basic pattern. I checked my gauge and it was perfect. The variegated yarn for the stripe was flashing or pooling or striping or whatever, which was not exactly what I'd planned, but I Dealt With It because the alternative was probably Thinking. And Weaving In Ends. Neither of which were particularly interesting to me at the time.

The yarn is Plymouth Yukon (or something like that), a pretty charcoal for the base, which was a too-nice replacement for some Lion Brand Chunky I'd sent my new-knitter friend away with. The stripe is variegated with pinks, purples/blues, and a light-ish, fetching brown, where by "fetching" I mean given the choice to take or leave it, I'd probably leave it, but I've already mentioned the "no thinking" thing. Which also put the does-brown-go-with-charcoal question off the table as well.

So, when my gut said to my brain, "Four inches does not seem long enough, really, to go before starting the crown shaping," my committed-to-unthinkingness brain said "bah." And my gut was completely right, of course. But I'm severely bad at judging how long any kind of shaping (crown, toe, etc.) will turn out to be, so I do not trust my instincts at all, because my instincts are exactly how I've ended up with too-short socks. I trust the patterns. Which up until now have worked fairly well.

So, I finished up the hat and triumphiantly tried it on, as on as it would go, and does anyone know any hat-needing 5-year-olds? Note to self: scrounge up a charity that would be interested.

Or maybe I could give it to the little girl who I knit a hat for last year, from the same book, that was also way short. Hmm...

Stephanie's Knitting Rules has set me straight for the cast-on number and a ballpark of how far to go before starting crown shaping. This next one will most certainly not be done in a night, and maybe not even for a while if I run out of yarn, which I probably won't, but I am completely unable to eyeball these things, so anything's possible.