It's about knitting again.

  I didn't knit any kind of swatch for this hat.  I just kept increasing until it looked good, but forgot that it might grow a bit more once I started the body of the hat.  It came out a lot bigger than planned, but I'm hoping it will fit someone.  It is also a lot busier looking than I had expected.  To make it I used my usual technique of knitting or purling into the stitch below instead of doing a yarn over.  I tend to forget if I need to yarn over before or after the slip and I find this method a lot easier for me.

  As I went I switch which yarn was going to be the knit row yarn and which was going to be the purl row yarn.  I didn't switch which rows were knit or purl, so some times I worked two rows with the same color.

  The row count breakdown went like this:

19 - 7 - 13 - 18 - 20 - 3 - 10

  The second hat was worked in a similar way with the way I switched the yarns but kept working a knit row and then a purl row.  I used less increases and it came out to be a hat that is too big for me, but is more along the size I was aiming for.

  The row count breakdown went like this:

6 - 11 - 20 - 8 - 6 - 1 - 20 - 3

  For the third I had to do fewer increases because of the yarn I had left.  I used the Stephen West method where I kept using the colors in the same order but changed which row I was doing.  That meant that I might do two knit or two purl rows in a row.  The different rows on this one are a bit more subtle.  I might be able to make one more small hat from the last of the cotton yarn I have from the first hat.

  The row count breakdown went like this:

17 - 20 - 11 - 10 - 4

  This is just a 2x2 rib started from the top, it was supposed to become my purse knitting.  I like making these because they are very stretchy and then can fit a variety of heads.  It is also easier to use up all the yarn when you don't have to guess how much you need for the crown.  The length tells me that I should maybe have made wider, but I liked the striping and if I added more stitches it would have changed how the colors look.

  I was right to worry that I was going to run out of knitting.  I had decided to get a skein of yarn at one of our Wal*Mart stops, even though I don't need more yarn in my life right now.  I'm a bit glad I did because of how much I'm liking this yarn.  I'm going to be looking into getting more Lion Brand Mandala Sparkle in Aquila once I work through more of my stash.  I think two of these would be really fun to use when making a Jagged Spine Shawl.

  I messed with this stitch before on a hat, but I was curious what it would look like if there were color changes.  You can kind of see what I'm doing in this picture.  I'm working a 2x2 rib with brioche elements.  I looked online, but I haven't been able to find anyone else who has done this before.  I might make a written pattern for it.  It doesn't look very different from regular 2x2 rib from a distance, but it does let it lay a bit flatter.