I've had a bit of challenge on my hands knitting this chapeau, the third Gretel to grace my needles. You see, the recipient is a petite little thing, and as a result has a petite little noggin. When Cathers tried on my last Gretel, she looked to be drowning in a sea of mustard coloured cables. No problem! I can size it down! ...Right?
There was no way in hell I was about to deal with math or re-jigging cables, so I chose to simple scale down the yarn and needles. As I'm attempting to go easy on the wallet and hard on the stash, I picked a skein of Drops Alpaca from my yarn stock and tried needles .75 mm smaller than the pattern called for (3mm & 3.75 instead of 3.75 & 4.5 for those that care about such matters). After I completing the ribbing I started getting cold feet. Was this thing going to be too small? Did I downsize too much? What if it turns out baby-size? Or beetlejuice size!
Eek! I though it would be best to compare the new version with the old:
Not very promising. I cast on again, upping the needle size by .25mm (3.25 & 4mm for the aforementioned folks that give a rats ass). Though the size was looking better, the knitting was looking a little loosey-goosey:
I suspect this yarn with this pattern are not meant to be... unless knitting for pin-heads. On to bachelorette number two!
Mystery "Swedish Wool Yarn" from a swap a while back.
I prefer the colour to the Alpaca (not that you can see much difference in this photo, but trust me, it's much more of a "wine" colour) though it's not as soft. Enh? You can't win 'em all. This time I'll try the same needle size as the last but with the new yarn. Cross your fingers/toes/miscelaneous appendages!
6 comments:
crossed!
it's SO hard to judge with ribbing though...I find it always ends up being a lot bigger in the end than you'd expect. I'm about to do another gretel as well. My last one, a tad big. Do I knit the small version and then just block it out slouchy I wonder?
maybe I should just move on to something new.
I'm not ripping out the 2nd version just in case!
I cannot wait !! I am holding your little yarn sample in my hand right now and it's beautiful - as I will be when I wear the beret EVERY DAY.
Will you still wear it everyday if it's Beetlejuice size?
Yes!
And speaking of having a shrunked head...I was at the ATM this morning and a kid actually pointed at me and yelled "mom, look how small that girl is!"
True story.
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