" “Take off your hat," the King said to the Hatter..."

"..."It isn't mine," said the Hatter.

"Stolen!" the King exclaimed, turning to the jury, who instantly made a memorandum of the fact.

"I keep them to sell," the Hatter added as an explanation; "I've none of my own. I'm a hatter.” " *

I am not a hatter, but I feel a bit like one.

Having said I would take a break before knitting any more hats, I then realised I was seeing my very pregnant friend pretty soon and it would be infinitely more convenient to give her both jumpers and both hats at the same time.

So I found myself once again knitting using the Dayton pattern, this time in the smallest size, and once again knitting to a deadline - I started on Monday and needed both finished by Saturday evening.

The first hat went pretty smoothly. Knitted up quickly, finished in three days (plus some finishing and pom pom making). However, partway through my second hat, I opened the pdf pattern on my phone (rather than using the LoveKnitting App) and it opened an entirely different version of the pattern, with different sizes and different directions. No notice of this happening, no choice of using the old or new pattern. I was pretty unhappy, considering I had already started knitting using the old version.

Luckily I had saved the old version elsewhere and, by not closing the app, I could still access the original pattern document. But I wasn't happy. You think it would tell you the designer had updated the pattern. Grr...

Once that hurdle was...well, hurdled, I soon encountered another. I was mid-way through the cabling (was on the third cable repeat out of six) when I realised I had messed up. And messed up in a superbly stupid way. I had begun the cable row and not actually cabled any stitches. I moved two stitches on to the cable needle, put the needle to the back of the work, and then promptly knitted those two stitches rather than the two next ones. About half-way through the row I started cabling properly, but I still didn't realise my mistake until the row afterwards when I suddenly saw only half of my hat was in the correct pattern.

I tried to tink back a row and a half, but found it impossible to untwist the stitches. I then ripped th row out, but then couldn't pick up all the stitches and be confident they were on the same row, that I hadn't missed any, and that they were the right way round.

I will be honest, I cried. I had a bit of a tantrum. This was Friday night, the day before my deadline, and I was ripping all my beautiful cabling out. I managed to pick up my stitches from the garter stitch band, and the rest was fine.

It was pretty hairy for a bit, but I finished in good time on Saturday and my friend was delighted with the knits. PHEW.


*Quote from Lewis Carroll,