FO - Spooky hat

Finished Object - Spooky Hat. Here's how I adapted the pattern to fit my needs.

About six years ago, I decided I finally wanted to make a leap into knitting. I've been crocheting since I was, oh, probably 14 years old. I had always loved the look of knitting, and I did make a go at it once, but whatever franken-item it turned into made me decide to stick with crochet for the time being.

A year later at Christmas I received a set of straight wooden knitting needles, and I decided it was finally time to try my hand at knitting, for real this time. And because I am who I am, and I for some reason have to take on the most impossible tasks, I decided my first project was going to the Spooky Hat pattern. Now wait a minute, lets rewind and break this down so you understand what's going on here:

What I wanted to make:

Project: Spooky Hat

Project Design: Colorwork hat, knit in the round

What materials I had:

Needles: Straight needles

Yarn: Like three different weights of yarn

Experience knitting literally anything: Zero

Probability of this going well: Negative five

I took a look at the pattern and noticed that it seemed rather tall. I like hats to fit my head snugly with little excess in the crown. So what I needed to do was adjust the pattern so the decreases for the crown happened during the final colorwork section, instead of after.

So not only do I not have the correct needles, nor have any colorwork experience (let alone any knitting experience), I also had to figure out how to modify the pattern to change the place of the decreases, AND figure out how to knit this thing flat on straight needles.

I bought the pattern, I had the yarn. That's about all I had good going for me at this moment. I took the pattern and I went into Excel (yeah, Excel), where I hand copied the colorwork design into. Then I had to decide where to place the four sections for crown decreases. This is where I realized, that the moon and stars pattern would only be able to be repeated four times, instead of eight.

I finally got the crown section figured out, and now it was time to start knitting it. I somehow figured out how to knit the pattern flat while knitting colorwork and carrying yarn strands across the wrong side of the hat. To be honest, I don't think I even made a gauge swatch, I probably didn't know what that mean at the time. I just picked out whatever yarn I had at the time, the suggested needle size, modified the hat to change the decreases, and knit it flat. Let me remind you too, I had three different yarn weights going on, one of my colors I actually had to knit with two strands because it was so thin.

I was so thrilled and happy with this finished object, it really inspired me to continue knitting. I got an circular interchangeable needle set for next Christmas, that way I could properly follow patterns and knit the round. My first pattern with the circular needles was a super easy project that was truly mean for beginner knitters. Gloves. With fingers. If you're wondering, yes, that was sarcasm. Please don't start with gloves as your first knitting project, nor a circular colorwork hat project on straight needles. I mean, unless you really want to of course!

So I guess the moral of the story here, is don't give up. Make things work for you and adapt to overcome challenges in order to reach your goal. If you set your mind to it, you can do anything. I know that saying has been way overused, but it really is true.

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