FO: Andraste

When I started knitting this, hot on the heels of Justin’s hat, I was certain the yarn was destined to become a Dragonflies Hat by Joji Locatelli. So certain, in fact, that when I made it to the crown decreases and realized the whole thing was turning out much too short, I immediately ripped everything out and started again on a larger needle. When I made it to the crown decreases a second time and it was still—inexplicably, disappointingly—too short, I spent a solid evening mulling over ways that I could fix it. A smarter knitter than I might be able to devise a way to repeat the pattern a third time, but I couldn’t tease out a solution, and I also couldn’t convince myself that adding another inch or two of ribbing wouldn’t disrupt the balance of the design.

After setting the pattern aside (with a promise to myself that one day I’ll knit the sweater version instead), I cast about my Ravelry favorites and decided on Droste Effect by Amy van de Laar, a free pattern from Knitty’s Deep Fall 2015 issue. Besides going up a needle size for both the ribbing and the body, I knit it exactly as written. I had a minor hiccup with the Decrease 5 to 1 instructions, but found helpful notes on another user’s project that had me speeding through in no time. While I love to lose an hour scrolling through all the loveliness in the pattern database, I think I’m most gratified when I can find—and give!—that little hint or nugget of knitting wisdom that turns an imminent failure into a success. In fact, my proudest knitting achievement to date is creating a project with notes that have helped 10 people.

What’s your proudest knitting (or crocheting, or sewing, or crafting) achievement?

4 thoughts on “FO: Andraste

  1. Great hat, I love the cables! I wouldn’t knit a hat 3 times either…
    (Hey the fields in your comments thingy aren’t labelled- I’m going to guess they are name and email or vice versa, but if you can change them you might want to look into it. I’m using Firefox)

    1. Thanks for letting me know about the missing labels on the comment form! I think it must have been a theme update? It should be fixed in both Firefox and Chrome now. 🙂

  2. Great yarn, cute hat! Cables are so much fun.

    Proudest knitting moment? Yikes. Probably just learning, I guess. I made my husband a Punisher sweater that he never wears- that was an accomplishment to finish because it took FOREVER.

  3. Wow, I’m super impressed with the mods you made to not only replicate the Punisher logo, but also place it place perfectly on the shoulders like that. Plus, you must have some crazy patience to knit a man-sized sweater in black yarn. It’s a shame he’s won’t show off your handiwork!

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