Gretel

When I was younger my mom once bought me a beret. I think it was purple, or maybe red. I think I wore it to school, but I always had the vague sensation that it looked sort of dorky. Not that berets themselves are necessarily dorky, just that they look dorky on ME. In fact, I firmly believed that ALL hats made me look like a fool, so I switched to wearing earmuffs. Huge, neon pink ones (remember those?). Clearly I'm not that bright. =)

I've since resigned myself to wearing hats since the cold gives me headaches, but I still harboured a slight beret prejudice. So imagine my surprise when I fell in love with Gretel. I'd seen a bunch of them around blogland/Flickr and didn't think too much of them. Then suddenly I woke up one day and HAD to have one. Immediately! So I ordered some Malabrigo (Pale Khaki) from the Personal Threads sale and cast on as soon as the yarn arrived.



I knit the "normal" size, and I assumed that I would have enough yarn since the pattern called for ~200 yards, but as soon as I started the crown decreases I realized that I didn't have nearly enough. I didn't want to buy another ball of yarn, so I totally fudged the pattern and eliminated most of the rows between the decreases, which included a cable.



I think the hat still looks ok, despite the fact that it's missing maybe 8 rows of the pattern. I definitely want to make this again though, the "proper" way so that it's just a bit slouchier. It was a super-fun knit, pretty easy, and involved lots of cables containing both knits and purls. =)



This is how much yarn I had left at the end. Looks a bit like a tapeworm, huh? Eww. =)