Autumn Leaves Hats and Hat-Selfie

Since my Polar Bear post, where I have said that the only thing that keeps me awake at night is thinking about my next pattern, I have hardly given that bear a thought, daytime or night. Almost the next day my mum, who is 94, had a fall in her flat and fractured her leg. She is now in a residential care home. It has been quite a difficult time, as my mum does not live close to either me or my sister, but the reassuring thing now is she is at least at the end of a phone so we can talk to her daily and get down to see her as often as possible.

Before this all happened my mum had said she would like a new knitted hat, so while I was waiting for her to be discharged from hospital, this is what I made. The hat was delivered on Boxing Day, and although she won't be going out for a while, she did seem to like it and I am hoping she will be up and about again wearing it before too long. She was also making good use of her birthday shawl.

The pattern I used was Autumn Leaves Slouchy Gotland Hat by Sue Blacker.  I did not use the suggested wool or needle size, so there was quite a bit of guess work. I do like ravelry pattern search - I just typed in doubleknit, worked flat, free and hat, and they come up with a choice of patterns. 

I think the hat on the pattern looks nicer than mine, but I know that my mum wanted a close fitting hat so was pleased with the result. I used the recommended number of stitches, and one of the good things about this pattern is the leaves on the crown of the hat have a 8 stitch repeat, so you can make it bigger or smaller very easily. The wool I used was James C. Brett - Marble. I really like this wool as it comes in such great colours, and I buy in a small hardware shop in Teddington. There among the brushes and buckets is a small rack of wool. My mum has a small head so for the size I just looked at one of my own hats, and cast on so it was a good few inches smaller. (I have a large head!) In these pictures I was just trying it on my daughter for size thinking she would be about the same size as my mum. (I probably have enough wool left from the one ball I used to make another hat.) You can't really see the leaf pattern on the top, and I forgot take my camera to photograph it on Granny, but it did fit. 

The photo above was taken after our Christmas lunch. I really like it as it sort of sums up what we all do after Christmas lunch: I guess half of us play with our new toys, and the other half have a bit of a snooze. You can at least see what a lovely colour the wool is.

Update on The Hat: So here is the second version of Autumn Leaves, made with the rest of the wool. Here I added in an extra two leaf repeats, and knitted the rib section deeper. I also added a few plain rows between the rib and the leaf section, which you can see in the photo below. I am really pleased with how it has turned out, and it will be my standing in the playground hat for the next few months. It is very hard to take a photo of yourself in a hat. Is that called a hat-selfie? The second photo was my best one after many attempts.