A few weeks ago, one of my knitnight buddies finished a hat* on a Thursday evening a few weeks back and tried it on. She has now learned how terrible an experience that can be, since the reaction was "That looks like a foreskin." (Nice girls we are, really. Come join us!)

I have the long lost sibling of The Foreskin Hat. Allow me to introduce you to The Condom Hat:

Or The Booby Hat. Whichever you prefer.

Oh dear. This is the second iteration of My So-Called Hat, and it's not really going according to plan. I started the seaming, took a look, stopped and said to Ironman, "What does this look like to you?" You can guess the rest.

Riiiiiiiiip. Thankfully not much reworking was required.

Pattern: My So-Called Hat by Becky Herrick
Yarn: Malabrigo Worsted, in Bobby Blue, less then one skein
Needles: Initially US 7/4.5 mm, but US 8/5.0 mm were the way to go.
Start/finish: I started the initial incarnation over the Christmas holidays (12/27) and finished with Version 2.1 on 2/9/09. If I had worked on it more devotedly, it would have been much faster (Version 1.0 was done in 2 days if that gives you a better idea of how long this hat could take).
Comments/mods: I may be the only person in the Knit-verse who has not made My So-Called Scarf, so I had lots of fun with the stitch pattern. For Version 2.1 I cast on 134 stitches (2 more then called for in the pattern) so I could work a 1-stitch stockinette selvedge to make for smoother seaming at the end. There was also a mistake in the original pattern that called for working a turning row and then starting with the wrong side pattern row. This would result in a hat that has the right side showing on the brim and the wrong side showing on the rest of the hat. So I started with the right side pattern row and it came out fine.

To de-condomize the top, I ripped back to the second-to-last set of decrease (I think I had ~30 stitches) and worked p2tog all the way across on the wrong side. At that point I had in the neighborhood of the right number of stitches, so I just broke off a long tail of yarn, threaded it through the live stitches, and used the end to mattress stitch the seam.

Voila!

Yikes! The iMac cam is no good for nightime photos. The true color is somewhere in between these two.

So now I have one new warm blue item to wear next week. Manon has a body but no arms. If no one talks to me on Thursday night I might be able to get them done by Saturday, but I suspect I will be knitting sleeves on the plane. Hopefully my fellow first class** passengers won't be too worried about my terrorist tendencies.

* She has now fixed the problem and has a lovely beret. And a new pair of socks!

**I have never flown real first class in my entire life, and I am disturbingly excited about it. Now everyone think happy, buoyant thoughts for oil prices so this move actually comes through, 'kay? Thanks!

Porpoise Fur