Brioche and a Commissioned Pattern

  The test hat grows.  One thing I wasn't anticipating was the fact that when knitting this style of brioche in the round you will have two knit-below stitches next to each other every other row.  For the most part that was leaving a bar of yarn across the gap.  I wasn't a fan of this and so I tried to see if adding a plain row between the brioche rows would fix the problem.

  Here is the quick swatch I did using the yarn farther down from the hat.  Yes, the hat is pushed down these needles, I just don't want to take it all out to find out I don't like this version either.  While it is a fun stitch, it doesn't have the same look as the one on the top.  Another note to make is that I'm knitting the hat inside out, so the top picture just shows the inside.

  I have figured out a fix though, an odd number of stitches.  That way I just keep repeating the two pattern stitches and it automatically offsets itself and no bar.  I have a plan to decrease one right before I start the ribbing without interrupting the pattern too much.

  The stitch pattern shows up the way I would like, but it is a bit hard to see it unless you are looking at it closely.  I'm wondering if that is because I'm working with cotton yarn, so I might end-up making another hat like this anyway.  It might also work itself out once I block it.  Cotton does have a tendency to grow.

  As you can see from the picture, I'm left with almost a full wrap around after my sewn bind off.  This could be for a few reasons.  It could be that I just allocated too much and have extra.  It could also be that since you have to pull all of the yarn through each step that between binding off the first time, taking it out, and binding off again I was just stretching the yarn more and more.  I don't feel like taking it out again, so this is how it is going to stay.  The yarn was already starting to get a bit fuzzy and frayed looking.

  I was looking through older posts and I thought I had mentioned it on here, but I somehow forgot!  It is also a pretty funny story.  I was watching random TikToks when a video showing someone making a granny square sweater popped up.  I watched the other parts of Topknot's Trunk video series on it and on the last one they mentioned that they were looking for someone to help them write a pattern for the sweater.  I decided to comment that I've written patterns before, even though I didn't think anything would come from it.  They commented back for me to email them and after sending a few examples they hired me!

  It was a bit tricky for me because I usually write knitting patterns, but they seemed to like what I did.  If you like the look of it, you can buy you own copy of the pattern on their website under Crochet Pattern - Make Your Own Granny Square Sweater.