I'm Not a Hat Person

I look like a total dork in a hat but I need something to keep my ears from freezing off my head on winter evenings when I go out to feed and check the alpacas. I usually wear a jacket with a hood but the wind goes right through the hood. When I saw a pattern for a hat with a cabled band I knew I had found a solution. Just knit the band and forget about the crown of the hat. Using some of the leftover Popsicle Alpaca/Merino I cast on 17 stitches on size 10 1/2 dpns. I worked a nine stitch braided cable bordered by 2k, 2p stitches on both sides. I knit until it almost fit around my head and grafted the two ends together. It's perfect. Now my ears will stay toasty warm while doing those evening chores in the barn.

Queen Nefertiti shows off the colorful chunky cables. I was impatient to photograph the headband while I waited for DH to get home and coerced her to pose for me.

Once he got home he took a pic of me wearing it. I love the way it fits and covers my ears just so. This project takes just a few short hours to knit. It would be a great Sunday afternoon quick knit. Or knit one up on Friday night for that Saturday trek through the woods.

More of these will be on my Christmas knitting list. My DIL is about to spend her first winter in Chicago so I know I'll knit one for her. (She doesn't know about the blog so there's no danger of her reading this.)

See the spindle of cotton thread there behind me? It came out of one of the local cotton mills and is about 65 or 70 years old. Our Grandparents (and our parents when they were very young) worked in the mills and I keep this as a symbol of how they struggled to put food on the table for their families. Fiber is in my blood.