Lotus Hat

So I've been busy these last few days catching up on some knitting. I've made some good progress on the Little Minx socks and the zauberball is showing up the textured pattern very nicely but the horizontal stripes haven't made an appearance as yet. Hopefully a good night of knitting this evening will change that and I'll take some photos to show you the difference.

But I do have a finished hat to show you - the Lotus hat designed by uptownpurls. The pattern is free, knitted in aranweight and is a nice quick knit. It's charted rather than written but its very simple to follow.

The only thing to watch out for is when the decreases change slant - you can see the criss cross pattern in the picture? One ridge is created by a K2tog decrease shifting one stitch for about 4 rows or so, then it starts a new ridge in the opposite direction. You need to use an SSK decrease here to keep the new ridge definition. The chart is very clear and tells you this but I didn't notice at first and had to take back a few rows - which was a pain with all the lace YO's floating around. If you do make a mistake and have to rip back, check your needle count before carrying on;-)) It'll be a YO missed out somewhere along the row.

But if you are much more with it than me:-) then you will rattle through this lovely design. It's designed as a beanie but also has instructions to increase the length as well if you prefer a longer hat. When it says the beanie version will just touch the ears - it means exactly that! I was worried it was a little too neat for me but now I've blocked it and set it to dry on the dummy head, it's grown slightly - just enough to be a better fit. Some knitters on ravelry have said that the larger size is too big and have to turn the rib edging over to fit better so maybe 3 pattern repeats and blocking is the best answer for a small/medium sized head and 4 pattern repeats for a large?

Overall, I love the pattern - a simple lace knit with impressive results. The decreasing for the crown is very cleverly written and the pattern flows seamlessly. Well worth the effort this one:-)