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Gripping
Nope. Nope I cannot bring myself to try to convince you that you need knitted tentacles in your life. This is not the sort of belief anyone is persuaded to hold. Either you come to know of the existence, nay the mere possibility, of knitted tentacles and you are instantly and inescapably gripped by the urge to make an entire swarm of them. Or you are not.
And either response is absolutely fine! You can live a full and happy life never once holding a knitted tentacle in your hand—never once bending it just so and using it to display your favorite bit of driftwood or pressing it into service as the perfect paperweight turned pen holder or having it pressing it into service to stand guard over your very favorite shells and rocks and tiny treasures. I’m absolutely sure you can go about your day without ever indulging in such flights of fancy.
I, however, am not nearly so stoic or respectable. And I confess, I look forward to seeing what my fellow reprobates create once the more respectable folks have left the room.
Tacit & Implicit
These shouldn’t be this enchanting. They really shouldn’t. That bit of fancy business there is just cables (easy cables at that, borderline boring cables). No really, I promise. It’s made from simple little two by two cables, lined up right next to each other and then stacked up one atop the other.
There’s absolutely no reason for it to be this charming. And yet...
I can’t explain it. Maybe it’s something to do with how orderly and tidy and logical they are? Or maybe it’s because they are cables but somehow don’t actually look like cables? Or maybe it’s just me and I am alone in finding them unspeakably endearing?
But somehow I don’t think so. I suspect you probably find them every bit as delightful as I do. Though I was so enamored of this whole project that I had to knit two different hats, which might be a tad bit excessive. It’s totally cool if you just want to make one!
Expound
You know that thing where the simpler something is, the more the details matter? Well the knitting here is about as simple as it gets (it’s very nearly all stockinette in the round), but that just gives the details room to shine.
You’ll start by working a turned hem (which has quickly become my absolute favorite way to start a hat, it’s just so tidy, and it keeps your ears extra warm and cozy) in a contrast color. Then you’ll work the body in your main color, carrying one single column of contrast color stitches up the side as you go. You’ll end by working a tiny little starburst with the contrast color at the very top of the hat (which is far cuter than it has any right to be).
This actually makes for a lovely (if somewhat restrained) hat all on its own, and you could totally stop here if you wanted to. But I don’t think you will. Because once you’re done knitting, you get to adorn your hat with some absolutely delightful embroidery.
As with the knitting, the embroidery is surprisingly simple. You’ll work a few rows of backstitching to build a framework then weave a lovely little lattice between the rows. I promise the lattice is not nearly as complicated as it looks (it’s really just two steps repeated over and over). You can totally do it, even if you’ve never embroidered anything before.
Though once you start, you may find it hard to stop!
Correlation & Causation
Ok, let’s get this out of the way right up front. They’re reversible!
They’re reversible, and not just in the ‘looks the same on both sides’ sort of way. They look totally different (and, if I may say so, totally awesome) on both sides. Which, if I’m being honest, absolutely fills me with glee! Because how can you not like getting two totally different looks from the same piece.
For you, who are no doubt more fashionable and more organized than I am, this means you get to decide which side you like best and show that one off. For me? Well for me it means I can yank my hat or mitts out of my coat pocket and put them on on the way to the mailbox and not worry about talking to my neighbor for ten minutes with my clothes on inside out (again, this is not something that would happen to you, because you totally have your act together and would never have that problem).
And no, no before you ask it isn’t any harder to work reversible cables than it is to work regular cables. The process is exactly the same. Set some stitches aside, work some other stitches, then work the ones you set aside. It’s just, if you set the right stitches aside, you end up with something that looks like you did a magic trick when you’re done.
And who knows, maybe you did!
Decorum & Comportment
Do I realize that not everyone will want to walk around with two wee pointy bits (ears? horns? who am I to say) sticking up out of the top of their heads? Oh yes, that’s why I made them optional.
Am I going to wear them sticking out and absolutely revel in any funny looks they garner from passersby? Also very much yes!
But you, should you happen to be feeling a bit more subdued, can absolutely tuck them in if you prefer. The hat is equally adorable either way.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to commit to one option or the other. You can totally pop the points in or out as the mood strikes. And, as we all know half the fun of being a knitter is having truly smashing accessory sets, you can do it while sporting the delightful matching mitts!
Hatched
These were never intended to see the light of day. They were meant to be for my own private amusement, inflicted on no one else.
For you see, I am a board game person (not one of you is shocked). And not just a board game person, but one of those people whose enjoyment of a board game is substantially increased if the various bits and pieces of the game are...cute (again, not a single one of you is shocked). So it was only natural that I knit myself a little nest to hold the egg-shaped tokens in one of my favorite games (someone is about to ask, it’s called Wingspan and it’s great).
And then, well then the nest made an appearance in a couple of random instagram pictures, because that sort of thing happens. And it turns out rather a lot of you share my peculiar predilections and wanted to do something similar. And I couldn’t in good conscience do just the nest by itself. So naturally I decided to add in some eggs (because somehow that makes it better?).
So here we are. A little nest, complete with drawstring ready to turn it into a pouch for game pieces or candy or whatever else you find amusing, and some eggs to go with it. Because sometimes these things happen. It’s better not to fight it.
Penchant
Exploring variations on a theme is my happy place. The more I look back on my earlier work, the more I see that this has always been the case. I love to find something fun, then tweak it and tweak it and tweak it, just to see what happens.
For these hats, that meant starting with a pretty little ribbing then setting to work with increases and decreases to make that ribbing wander off in a rather fetching fashion. But you see, there’s more than one way to do that. And it was too hard to pick just one, so I ended up doing two. Because once you realize you can get two different versions of a hat, each delightful and each with a different vibe, just by changing how you stack up your increases and decreases? Well it’s hard not to go ahead and do exactly that.
Restraint was never my strong suit!
And speaking of my scandalous lack of restraint, these hats are especially well suited to further adornment. When I was done knitting, I used duplicate stitch to doodle all over mine (you’ll see that in two of the pictures here).
More than one right way
I'm currently loving folded hems on hats. Folks tend to either think folded hems are Hard & Scary & Fancy, or they shrug and say sure I can do that. [...]
Explicate
I have a somewhat fraught relationship with what some folks call mindless knitting. I often reach for my knitting when I need a distraction from the world. If a project is too mindless, it won’t provide the necessary level of diversion. Worse yet, if it’s too mindless, I’ll get bored and never actually finish. And then the project will go to the pile of abandoned dreams in the corner and make me feel no end of guilt.
But not this time! This time I absolutely raced through what is, by any reasonable measure, fairly simple knitting. Because this time, when I was done, I knew that I was going to do something absolutely enchanting. I was going to embroider all over my knitting!
Should this have been enough motivation to push me through yet one more round of plain stockinette? Probably not. Was it? Oh very much so. Will it work for you? Every knitter is different, so I can’t make any promises, but I suspect it very well might!
Dispatch
There’s something magical about letters. I don’t know why. I’m not in charge of these things. There just is. The idea taking a tiny handful of the thoughts swirling around in your head, turning them on to words, putting those words on paper, and sending them off on an adventure to land on someone else’s doorstep and brighten their day is just kind of special.
My hope is to capture a tiny sliver of that magic with this knitted envelope!
Discretion dictates you not actually try and send it through the mail (though goodness knows I understand the temptation). But you can absolutely tuck a note (or a gift card, or some candy, or some other tiny treasure) inside and slip it under your sweetheart’s pillow or into a friend’s coat pocket or into your kid’s lunch box. Or perhaps you want to help the tooth fairy on her appointed rounds or make a post office play set (how cute would it be to make a little snap on stamp?) or knit a whole bunch and have the coolest advent calendar ever. I suspect that, as with most magical things, something delightful will occur to you if you just think about it for a little while!
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