A Tale of Two Hats

It was the best of hats, it was the worst of hats...

Some of you may remember this post from last year.  Making hats for Sagan has, historically, been a bit finicky.  Granted that history is less than one year, but still.

In an effort to get a jump start on the winter hat making in my house, I've already completed two (TWO!) hats.  And it's not even September. 

Before I allow myself to get all cocky and confident, both of those hats are for Sagan, and only one of them was meant to be.

First up we have the Baby Amanda Hat.  In all fairness, this is the exact hat I made last year so I knew I would like it.  I swapped out the yarn weight for a bulky Ariosa (Lipstick, of course) in the hopes it would fit her.  She was quite curious about it.  Clearly, an appreciation of Extrafine Merino is engrained in her DNA.  And she didn't put it in her mouth, obviously because she knows it's hand wash only.

I think she likes it, immediately removing it aside.  It is the middle of summer, after all.

It has enough room to grow, so we may even make it all the way through the winter. 

I next attempted to make Michael's hat.  During the Wool Walk, we found a pattern for a reversible hat at Wool & Grace. 

We grabbed some Schoppel Ambiente in two colorways (#1860, #2183) that Michael liked and I quickly forgot all about until I unpacked my yarn bags several months later.  Don't judge me.

I stumbled on the pattern in the midst of a Yarnia clean-out and got to work (mistake).  I made the brighter side first.  I was concerned that he might find it too pinkish, but the salt & pepper sections do a great job breaking it all up.

Then I added the muted yellows and greens, concerned that he might find it too bland and dull.

When it all comes together, you have two separate hats connected in the middle.  Just tuck one into the other and you get a reversible beanie. 

Why I needed a pattern to tell me to do this is beyond me.  I have crates... several crates, actually... of sock weight yarn.  I don't make enough socks for all the sock yarn that I have.  But I keep buying it because the colors are always so lovely and they look like twisted up rainbows and bags of marbles and a billion other colorful things.  And the names are generally really creative and imaginative and that makes it even harder to resist.  So I buy way more sock weight yarn than one person needs.

If only there was something smaller than a shawl I could make with all of that light weight yarn, something where I didn't need a huge amount of yardage, something that would work up relatively quickly. 

Something like maybe a hat, perhaps? Or even two hats?  And I could make two hats AT THE SAME TIME. 

If only there was something like that.

Of course, I did say there was a mistake, remember?  That mistake being that MIchael's head is about 47 times larger than mine.  I have a child-sized melon, whilst his is sputnick-sized.  Naturally, this is a lesson I will never learn. 

And that's how Sagan got two winter hats in August and Michael got none.  The hat fits me perfectly, but I made it a rule never to wear hats as it only draws attention to my itty-bitty head.  My face isn't big enough to house glasses and a hat.  I look a bit like Mush Mouth.  Throw earrings into the mix and it's game over.

It's a bit large for Sagan right now, but I doubt that will be a problem for long.  I plan to use how quickly she grows into it as a gauge to see who she takes after. 

Any bets?