elf baby

In between knitting a scarf for Will's birthday and longies for Andrea's baby, the Debbie Bliss cashmerino superchunky yarn I ordered arrived, and I just had to knit this little elf hat for Baby right away. The pattern is the Elf Cap from SimpleChic : Designer Knits, SuperQuick! by Jil Eaton. It was super quick, but not quite as quick as the book says. It took me about 4 hours, the pattern says 2. Oh well, I guess I'm just a slow knitter.

The pattern is super simple, too. My gauge was perfect with the yarn and size 13 needles. The toddler size took just under 1 ball of the cashmerino superchunky. I didn't put the tassle on the top that it called for, but I do have enough yarn left if I change my mind later. I love this hat, love the pattern, love the yarn, and now want to knit one for everyone in my family, including Aidan. How funny would that be? :)

I do think there is a mistake in the pattern, though. The photos in the book pretty clearly show the cable is evenly twisted (see red caps below). But the cable pattern is a 12 row repeat, with the cross overs occuring on row 4 and row 12. Which means the cable is loosely twisted, then tightly twisted, as shown on my hat below. To be evenly twisted the pattern would have had the cross overs on rows 6 and 12 (or 4 and 10). I'm not sure if the pattern is written wrong, or the samples in the photos were knit wrong. Because it looks good both ways. If it was meant to be evenly twisted, then it could have just been written as a 6 row repeat pattern, so that leads me to believe that the pattern is written correctly, and the photos are wrong. Unless it's some standard procedure to write cable patterns with 2 twists, even when they're evenly distributed. I'm not sure, maybe that's it. I wouldn't know, because this was my first ever cable project. Maybe I'll write to the author and ask. I searched online, and couldn't find an errata page or anything.