How can you knit while holding that crack pipe?

Christmas gift #1: A Selbu Modern for my Mom. Using the palette she got and didn't need for her purse (in pimento) and cream.



I worked dilligently for several weekends, listening to the same Burn Notice episodes over and over again. Would sneak in a round or two in the evenings that I didn't immediately crash into bed on returning home. By the crown shaping rounds, my tension was looking really good - barely any puckering to speak of.

Finished. Off the needles. Thing was... huge.

No! Not huge! Slouchy! Extra hip! It might make up for the beret that I made her last year that was more like a slightly loose beanie.

I had twisted the knits on the 1x1 rib, and used the size needles actually called for, so it stayed on fine. But -- and this is where it gets astonishingly stupid -- I had gone up a needle size for the body because I didn't have the called-for size in a 16" circ, but I did have a size bigger. What's .25mm between friends, right?

You can see where this is going. For a few days, I contemplated the only options I could fathom: felting it or going through every single stitch and pulling it a little bit tighter, ending with a long tail of unneeded yarn, thereby changing the gauge. Felting it would change the drape of the thing, possibly working and breaking records for the warmest beret ever, possibly ruining it. I have never heard of anyone actually going through and pulling every stitch tighter. Genius innovation, or utter folly? (That's not rhetorical -- I still haven't frogged my Wicked because I still might try that.)

Still hopeful that it might just be really, exceptionally cool, and maybe not even so huge as it looks, I considered blocking it over the recommended 10" dinner plate. Well, the hat ate the plate and then asked for a casserole dish and a mug of ale to wash it down. No go. So I frogged back to the ribbing and started over after a trip to the store for the right size needles. (Of course I didn't write down what size I needed, and had a moment of panic in the store when faced
with 2.25 and 2.75 16" circs. I guessed right, though. Phew.)

Coming up will be more Christmas knitting (and Christmas frogging) and presents of yarn and yarn-related things.