No, I haven't knitted anything with Hello world (yet) but I tried my hand on robot hat as a next geek thing :)
Pattern is free, chart is great, although I prefer written instructions than charts, but end result is not fitting, alas. Ah, fair isle knitting is harder than I thought.
So I got 2 skeins of Knitpicks Swish DK (superwash) charcoal wool, since my DH will not agree to any other color there, besides monitor green robots and black for hat; I also bought one skein of Asparagus Swish DK for robots. I was afraid that I will run out of black yarn, because brim was done in different color on the pattern, but it was enough with nice chunk of leftover for something else.
After 3 unsuccessful attempts to do this on Size #6 DPNs (I HATE THOSE) when my stitches just keep sliding off, helpful people on diaperswappers.com suggested to work on circular needles and switch to DPN when I start doing decreases i.e. after robots. That was lifesaver so I started on a ribbing.
Ribbing is done in strange pattern (for me), but since this is my first hat, I just knitted on. k3 p1 looked kind of wide, but since my geeky DH has big head, it was ok; so I hoped. Then we got to the robots part...
One of the tecniques for Fair Isle is to do one color in Contitental, one in English style. Sounds really neat, so I've tried... and tried... and tried. For the same reason I "invented" Continental stitch while my teacher tried to teach me English one, I can't do English stitch. It didn't matter in regular knitting, since Continenal is faster :) but in Fair Isle that meant I had to drop yarn _all _the_time :( Awful. I have no idea why it's hard for me to do English way, but it's so awkward for me, so I always end up doing it other way :(
To avoid long floats on the back, I twisted every 2-3 stitches - it looks really neat on the back! I don't have to worry about DH sticking his finger in the floats on the back! More dropping of the yarn though :(
And thing hibernated there till we came from vacation... I was so proud, but scared to continue and ruin the rest of the hat by making mistakes. It took 3 hints from my DH to continue to work on it :)
So I switched to DPNs... In the meantime, I bought Knitpicks wooden DPNS (Harmony), because stitches will slide less from wood and they are so beautiful. Yes, they did help a lot, but I don't think I can do whole hat on them no matter what. Viva la circulars!
Decreases on this pattern are strange - I remember my teacher mentioning that when we lean decreases, we will almost never do them on row by row; one row of decrease, one row of knit. Looks like this is one of the cases when this is not true. Hmmm....
Took me 2 evenings to get all those decreases to 2 on each needle. This is hard on my hands - when they are cramped for space they hurt, and this is small space for sure. I don't think I am going to be baby hats knitter :( Probably not adult hat knitter either - I never wear hats, and this pattern got me because ROBOTS are there :)
So DH tried it on and what a disappointment - ribbing is floppy, by design looks like, but robots part is too tight on his head! So I will have to frog it :(
According to nice people on Ravelry, stranded work being too tight is normal newbie mistake on Fair Isle :( I wish I knew that beforehand!
I took picture so that I have a proof that I did it, before I frog this offending hat and attempt this again...
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