So, Now it’s February

That means it’s almost pruning time.

Roses.
Fruit Trees.

And bare root tree planting time.

Figs?
Cherries?

And garden planning time.

Veggies, dye plants, herbs. Oh My!

Exciting, eh?

But it doesn’t feel like it.
Its a dank, dreary mess out there today.

And so we’ll play make-believe.
And we’ll go back to the days when the grass was long and the sun was high-

this one’s kinda hazy, like a memory…

to the days when handspun grew on trees 🙂

And berries were blushing on the bushes

These days will come again, I know. But right now it seems a long ways off.

So, in the meantime here are the general directions for this hat-

First you knit the cable-y portion. Pretty sure what I did here was

K P P C6F P P C6B P P K

Twist the cables every 8th row.
Knit this pattern until you have the length equal to about the circumference of the head you’re knitting for, slipping the first stitch of each row to make a nice neat chains on the sides.

When you’ve got the right length, pick out the cast on edge (suppose it would have made more sense to start with a provisional caston, eh?) and use the 3-needle bind off technique to join the ends.

Now you pick up stitches for the crown of the hat.
Instead of picking up the edge stitches themselves, you are going to pick up stitches from just behind the edge, on the back side. This way your chain of slipped stitches forms a nice neat border for the cable panel.
I usually find that picking up 2 stitches out of every three works well.
Once you’ve got your crown stitches picked up, the rest is worked in reverse stockinette. Alternate colors each round, and decrease 8 stitches every other row.

Pick up stitches on the other side of the cable panel in the same manner and knit 2×2 ribbing for about an inch, then knit three rounds (to make the edge roll, and cast off very loosely.

And there you are.
Hope it keeps you nice and snug until La Nina releases her hold on us.