Three Hats- Love, Like, Hate

Well hey there, it's been a while! I'm trying to ease back into this blogging thing - it really does become hard to start back up once you've gone a while without writing anything. So to get rolling, today I have three previously unblogged hats for you and for one reason or another, I'm not totally happy with any of them, though this first one is pretty close to perfect. It's easy to blog things you love but I thought this might be a good record of what I like and don't like in a hat so I can keep tabs going forward, plus I'm sure a lot of us have been in a similar situation. Lets start with my favorite of the three, Zion Lion by Wool and the Gang.

Honestly I'm 99% in love with this hat, and I should add that I was sent this hat kit, with needles, free from Wool and the Gang to test out. The knitting process went smoothly and quickly as one would expect with a gigantic yarn and needle, it's knit flat and seamed up the back. I thought the seam in the back would bother me but it doesn't thankfully. I love the shape and the warmth; this hat kept me going all winter long here in Chicago.

Now for the part I don't totally love. It's kind of hard to tell in this photo but the bulky single ply yarn got super gnarly over the course of the past 6 months, as one would expect with a yarn like this. It was still a bummer though and while I keep wearing it anyway, I can't help but feel a bit sad for my fuzz town hat. At least it was well loved!

Now onto the next hat! This pattern is the ever popular Purl Soho Simple Pleasures hat knit up in their own yarn, Worsted Twist, of which I unfortunately do not remember the colorway. I absolutely loved working with this yarn, it has a beautiful sheen and feels great on the needles. I also love the color, it's kind of a greenish stone grey in real life that is very hard to photograph.

I had knit one of these hats a while back using some forest green KnitPicks yarn and wore it till it died so I figured this would be the same, but this version turned out gigantic, and I don't just mean it's too tall, which it is. I should have stopped knitting for the crown decreases much earlier than instructed, but besides that the hat is just way too big. I think the yarn I previously used may have been a bit thinner than this and I just thought "Oh hey, they're both worsted, it's cool!" and went on my merry way.

We're going up north this weekend so I'll probably leave this hat up there for the next time we're at the cabin during the winter months. Or maybe I'll unravel the hat and use the yarn for something else. One or the other, but either way I don't think it's a loss and I had a great time knitting with this yarn.

This last hat I 100% hate and is probably the most annoying thing I've ever knit. May I present to you the Purl Soho Boyfriend Hat . I know like 500,000 of us have knit this thing and if you have, please let me know how you feel about yours in the comments below! I don't know where I went wrong on this thing but it was a straight up disaster.

You might be able to tell from how far back it is on my head in these photos but this hat turned out gigantic! I used a similar weight yarn as the Line Weight called for in the pattern, got gauge, then went down a needle size because of the fact that my yarn contains 70% Alpaca and that can tend to stretch. Even with this precaution the hat turned out about 2" larger than it should have based on the Purl measurements despite the fact that my gauge was smaller than called for. At first I chalked it up to me being crazy but Kendra knit two for Christmas presents and had the exact same problem.

The other bummer about this hat is the cabled cast on they recommended in the photo resulted in this majorly wavy cast on edge. I should have known, you can see it waving in the Purl photos, but I just figured they knew better and it would work itself out. Guys, listen to your gut! Steph mentioned she used the long tail method and her cast on edge looked great so I think that's probably the best bet if I ever knit this thing again. Also it took forever to knit all this 1x1 rib! I tried to give the hat to my boyfriend but Jon also hated it and it's gathering dust somewhere in the house until one of us finally throws it out. Ah well, knit and learn!

I've got a few hats in my Ravelry queue that I want to knit up that I think have a lot of potential, and I'm almost finished with the sweater I started back in January after ripping the entire thing out once and starting over. Have you guys knit anything you hated? Did you rip back or just try to go with it?