Last night, I finished up my bulky-weight reworking of the basic tam pattern in One-Skein Wonders. I’d left the book up at Melissa‘s apartment and she was very patient about dropping what she was doing to read various bits of it to me. (We had variations on, “It’s a tam. The pattern is after the photo section in the middle of the book.” “Is it X [insert name of the wrong pattern here]?” “No.” “Is it XX?” “No.” Once Melissa located the pattern, we moved on to things like, “Just before it says ‘decreases’ does it say how many inches are knit?” Bless her a thousand times over for her generosity of spirit.)
Of course, I wasn’t actually following the pattern, per se, but I was using it to help with my “guestimations.” I used Moda Dea Cache, which I’d found on sale for $2 a ball—can’t resist a bargain! I’m snowed under at work just now, but in the next few days, I’ll post the pattern and the “formula” I’m planning to play with to continue trying this pattern in other yarns.
I’d worked with Cache once before on a scarf and had mixed feelings about it then. There didn’t seen to be any real pattern to the color changes and the yarn itself is rather coarse: essentially two strands of roving with a metallic thread thrown in. (Again, pictures of yarn, hat, etc. to follow.) The tam pattern was much better for this yarn: I got nice, narrow stripes around the hat of variegated peacock and rose, with wider bands of the main color, moss.
I also picked this yarn up in two other colorways—one pinks and yellows, the other silvers and beiges. Although I’d be risking another round of same-hat despondency, I’m tempted to knit these up into tams, too, so I can look at them side by side.
BTW—Melissa sent me a mock-up of the postcard with the hat pattern. It’s going to be great! I’ll put that up here too once it’s ready. I am so stoked that I’ll have something to share with the folks I meet at Stitches West.
Also BTW—Our kitten Spartacus (Sparky) has nominated himself to be a guest yarn reviewer for this blog. He feels I’m leaving out all sorts of important things, like kick-ability and bite-ability and how many laps you have to run around the house to use up an entire skein.
One more BTW—I just figured out that I have to approve comments before they appear on this blog (oh, brave new world!). So if you commented and felt tragically excluded from the conversation because your contribution never showed up, that situation has been remedied.