Elphaba Hat

Also pictured, my Muppet Fur Scarf.

I named this hat Elphaba in honor of The Wicked Witch of the West. Why? Because purple and green stripes make me think of classic witches, and she is one of my favorites. It is based on TECHknitter's 8 Trick Pocket Hat pattern. I want to say here that TECHknitting is my new favorite knitting blog. This woman has MAD Skillz. Now that I am comfortable with the basics, the tweaks and tips on her site are just what I need to energize my knitting.

Her method of doing jogless stripes is excellent! In case you don't know what a jog is, let me explain. When you knit a hat like this, in the round, you are basically knitting one long spiral. When you change yarn colors, you have two different colored stitches butting up against each other, creating a jog.

Here is a jog from my Beach Bag.

By performing a little series of knitting acrobatics, one can manipulate the finished product to alleviate this little imperfection.

Here is the color change side of my hat. You can still see the joins if you look closely, but it's better than it was before!

I just get so jazzed when I learn something new! Now anytime I want to knit something with stripes, I have this little knitting algorithm in my bag of tricks.

The hat came out just a tad too short for my liking, but that was completely my own fault. I tried to adapt this pattern for a different yarn size without doing all the math. There is quite a lot of planning and swatching and other preparatory work that goes into a well made knitted garment, and frankly, I can be an impatient woman. Sometimes I just have to wing it, and this time I got a nice warm hat that is not exactly what I imagined in my head. I like taking the knitting theory from one pattern and messing around with it a bit, to make it my own. Next time though, I will do all the math FIRST.