This? This is a picture of incipient heartbreak and woe and a good hat gone bad. I tell you this at the outset so you don’t get too invested.

But since I had to go on this benighted adventure (and since I did all this knitting and took all these pictures before the problem with this project became apparent), I figure I might as well bring you along on it too.

Because things *were* awfully promising at the start! Alas, that will change…

P.S. The yarn turned out to be the source of the problems, so I won’t be naming it, and I ask that folks not try to guess.