Now where is all this cold weather?

Happy New Year!  I hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year and not finding everything just a little bit flat after the holidays.

The New Year hasn't brought much of a change in the weather it seems. After 4 years of bitterly cold winters, at least for some of the time, it comes as a bit of a shock to the system that this one has been so mild in the run up to Christmas and remains mild now, as we head towards the middle of January.  I'm all geared up for proper cold weather and it hasn't come.

So bearing mind this mild weather, what have I done this week?  Made a new chunky hat of course!   I think I mentioned it in an earlier post that I bought this lovely Malabrigo yarn at the Knit and Stitch show at Alexandra Palace, back in October. 

This is me wearing it. I just love the colour - one of my favourites

It took me a while to track down a pattern. It would have been easy to go to the Local Yarn Store(LYS) and buy a pattern but I have so many books and magazines, and access to Ravelry that I didn't want to do that. Surely it couldn't be that easy to find?! Wrong,  I couldn't find a pattern for that yarn, then I couldn't find one for the substitute that didn't need more than I had, or I just didn't like the pattern - too simple/ too fussy.  I am obviously hard to please. 

In the end I adapted a baby pattern from a book I have.  The hat was to fit a 16" head which required a cast on of 48 stitches.  I ended up scaling it up to 72 stitches to fit my rather large 24" head!  I had to add a set of patterns and then I also did 6 knit rounds that weren't in the pattern and because there were more stitches there were more decrease rows (I rather like the effect on the top).

I must admit I had to do quite a bit of frogging.  Having no pattern to work to I had to guess how many rows I needed and then I had to guess whether I had enough yarn to finish the job.  I think I got almost to the end of the decrease 3 times before I finally finished it, just because I had so much yarn left it seemed a shame to waste it and the hat, although a beany and meant to be snug fitting, was just a bit too short for me, so I  ripped it back and added some more rows.  I probably should have tried to work it  out properly and not guess but it seemed like harder work than knitting it so I didn't bother.  I am not even sure that I could have!

Anyway, I am very pleased with the finished article.  It is very warm and cosy, not to mention very soft and luxurious.

Now where is that cold weather so that I can actually get some use out of it?!