The End of One Slog

A simple stockinette item worked in the round really should not take a month and a half to knit, but I guess that's what happens when you knit a big slouchy hat in fingering weight yarn.

Pattern: Sockhead Slouch Hat by Kelly McClure
Yarn: Trekking XXL (75% superwash wool, 25% nylon) in color 143, approximately three-quarters of a skein
Needles: US 1 (2.25 mm) and US 2 (2.75 mm) Addi Sock Rockets, magic loop
Started/Completed: March 7/April 19
Mods: None

I was definitely late to the party on this pattern. It was very popular nearly a decade ago, and there are close to 14,000 projects on Ravelry. I guess I've just never wanted to "waste" a pretty skein of fingering weight yarn on a hat when I could use it for socks or a shawl. This yarn, however, was completely free -- I picked it up off the freebie table at Indie Knit and Spin back in February. These colors are not at all me, so I knew I wouldn't be tempted to use it for socks for myself, but I thought it would be perfect for charity knitting (and frankly that's the only reason I allowed myself to pick it up).

The pattern itself is super easy and straightforward, and other than remembering when to knit and when to purl for the ribbed brim, it's an entirely mindless knit. The only reason it took as long as it did was because I worked on it pretty much exclusively while putting Rainbow to bed until the past few days. The Mister and I trade off bedtime duty, so that meant I was, at most, working just a handful of rounds every other night. I probably would have devoted more concentrated time on it had I not had several other projects in the rotation as well, so perhaps calling it a slog is a bit of a misnomer. I wouldn't hesitate to knit the pattern again, particularly if I feel like using up some fingering weight yarn. Even with the self-patterning yarn, I don't think it's too busy, and it would be easy to enough to combine several partial skeins for some crazy stripes or color blocks.

I have not blocked the hat yet, but it will be getting a bath very soon and then will go into the donation pile that I'll be taking to SSK this summer. And because only having two current projects on the needles clearly isn't enough, I've started another charity hat to use up some extremely deep stash yarn (it was purchased more than a decade ago at a store that was closing, and it appears I never even entered it into my Ravelry stash).

This is Regia 6-fadig Crazy Color, which is now discontinued. I've tried to knit it several times but never been successful, so I'm sticking with something really easy this time around. I am following the Basic Hat Pattern from Ann Budd's Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns, so provided I can finish it before the end of the month, it will count both toward the SSK knitalong (because Ann Budd is one of this year's teachers) and for the charity knitalong. And it will be two more skeins busted from the stash!