Welcome to one cold May, people. I don’t know what the weather’s like where you’re at, but here in Kansas it is gloomy, chilly, and damp. While other crafters are kicking off Me Made May with bright, springy little outfits, I am quite glad to have a hat.

This is my Koolhaas hat, only nine years late. The yarn is Mountain Colors Twizzle.  I went to check to see if it’s discontinued (amazingly, it is not!) and discovered that my stash photo from my shoponthehighstreet days is up on the Rav page for this yarn.  Warm fuzzies!

Anyone else here remember when the Koolhaas craze swept the knitting world?  I had to have this hat, enough to buy the holiday edition of Interweave Knits that year…but clearly not enough to knit it right away.  I’m sort of glad I didn’t.  The pattern directs you to use a 16″ circular, a length I eschewed on principle…but probably should not have.  Twizzle is a wool/silk blend, and stitches kept slipping off the ends of my needles.  I also think I would have gotten the swing of the pattern much faster if I wasn’t constantly worried about the stitch count on each needle.

Besides the anti-mod of DPNs, my only change to the pattern was to begin with a tubular cast on.  I am mildly obsessed with this technique at the moment, and use the technique where you cast on with waste yarn.  I swear to you, there was a Techniques with Theresa in Knitty for it, but I cannot for the life of me find the article.  (If you have the link, let me know.

Moving on, with my as-usual short row gauge, this hat came out as a beanie.  During its test drive, it sat nicely on the back of my head, and nobody told me it looked like I was wearing a raspberry, so we’ll run with it.  If I wanted a real pull-over-the-ears sort of hat, I would have gone back and added another pattern repeat.  Or more likely, I would have decided that unpicking several rounds of decreasing twisted stitches in a silk blend was not worth the trauma and knitted a second hat for pulling over the ears.

One project off the wish list.  What little light we had is dying, but there’s still a little weekend left.  Time for more knitting!