Rainbow Hat Experiments

  I want to start out this post by announcing that the numbers are in from the Hatathon!!

Boston Marathon 31 out of 26

• Meanicequeen - 2 out of 1

• mere2012 - 4 out of 4

• MinnieMay9 - 9 out of 7

• Rsm6 - 6 out of 4

• Sulwen - 4 out of 4

• nettietheknitter - 6 out of 6

  I'm so proud of my team!  We came in second to the Chicago team who got 34 done.  I know it's not technically a competition, and everyone is on different teams than last year, but it's still fun to make it a friendly competition in my mind.

Pattern: Side To Side Ribbed Hat by Sally L.M. - Yarn: Caron Simply Soft in Country Blue Ombre 2720 dye lot 046414 504 and Red Heart Eco-Ways in 3372 Petal - Hook: 5 mm

   You've seen this one before, but it was one of the first ones in the experiment.  I did the color changes at the top because I was thinking that I then wouldn't have to worry about anything showing on the bottom where I had to weave in the ends.  It looks fine, but the colors aren't as crisp at the top as I would like them to be.

Pattern: Side To Side Ribbed Hat by Sally L.M. - Yarn: Caron Simply Soft in Autumn Red 9924 and Bone 9703 - Hook: 5 mm

  I like the color changes on this one a lot more.  I was hoping to avoid having so many ends at the bottom, but the wedges look a lot crisper this way.  I just chained at the beginning and started working on my version of row 2.  That means that I had three chains just dangling off the top until I worked the full row using the gather stitches.  I feel like this made the wedges more uniform in size.

Pattern: Side To Side Ribbed Hat by Sally L.M. - Yarn: Red Heart Super Saver Multicolor in 997 Sage Mary and Red Heart Super Saver Heather in 400 Grey Heather - Hook: 5.5 mm

  I had planned to do 14 rows of each color to see how it would look in case I needed more than seven wedges for the hat.  However, with this yarn and the gauge I was getting, each wedge is going to be 2.75" if I follow her short row instructions and 3.5" if I add my extra short row.  That means that it would work out that each color will get its own wedge.

  Since I'm still experiencing anyway, I decided to go a bit wild with this one.  I rolled a 20 sided die to see how many rows to do.  Since I liked the look of the color changes being at the bottom, I rounded up if it was an odd number expect for the very last chunk.

    12 • 6 • 10 • 14 • 10 • 3

Pattern: Side To Side Ribbed Hat by Sally L.M. - Yarn: Red Heart Super Saver Heather in 400 Grey Heather - Hook: 5.5 mm

  The seam always looked funny to me, no matter if I used the back loops like she said to or the front like I have been doing.  There is a good chance that that is because of how I've started skipping the first row.  So for this one I decided to end on the bottom instead of the top.  I also experimented with having only 8 sc top stitches, so my short rows went: 6, 4, 2.  I cannot explain why it has taken me this long to make an experimental hat that is a bit shorter.

  For me, this one had the best seam.  I went through the loop farthest away from the seam and then the entire chain on the other side.  I held the hat with the beginning chain close to me, so that meant that I was going through the back loop of the last row worked.  This pushed the Vs towards the front.  I continued the same on the top sc area.  If you look really closely, you can see where the seam is, but otherwise I almost lost where it was when taking the picture.

  I'm really excited to start the rainbow hats, but I need to get some more yarn out of my stash before I run off and buy more yarn for a new project.  With all the yarn I already have, you would think I would already have everything I would need for rainbow hats, but somehow, I do not.