Imitation is the sincerest...

I seem to get so many ideas these days from blog-reading. I feel like I'm such a copycat! My latest inspiration was seeing this hat
at Be-Stitched with instructions at www.rheatheylia.com. I assumed this hat was knitted, but was surprised to discover it is actually crocheted. I was intrigued since it's usually so easy to tell the difference.

I find that crocheted hats don't stretch much so the sizing has to be more exact. And hats knit with a single strand of worsted weight yarn are often not warm enough. Plus I have a pretty high failure rate anyway for making hats that fit and look decent, but I really wanted to try making those cables in crochet.

So for a $2.00 investment (including a 20% off coupon), I picked up a skein of Red Heart yarn in a color that I had been thinking about ever since I saw this sweater at Loopy Lou's. (Scroll past the chicken scratch). Not exactly the same, but the same effect. It's called 'Flecked Aran'. Wool has a nicer 'hand', but is too irritating to my skin.

The cool part of this hat is no seam to sew at the end. I made it in one evening (albeit a long evening). I refused to do any frogging so there are tons of mistakes.. but I just think of those as customization. The front and back post stitches made the hat thicker so the single strand of yarn was perfect. I never really quite understood how to do the row following the cable row. It was hard to find the 'post' on the row below.

The beauty part is that this hat fits, and I wore it for a walk in the winter cold yesterday. I'm very pleased with this experiment.