Flame Beanie Is Defeated!

Third time knitting a hat is the charm, I guess.

Here is the finished hat. You'll notice a couple of things that are different about it from the original pattern. For instance, I changed the colors to more traditional flame colors. And I added some 2 X 2 rib instead of the garter stitch border at the bottom. Garter stitch just wasn't working for me.

And I basically just said "to hell with trying to get guage." I couldn't get it with the Caron Simply Soft that I was using, no matter what needles I tried. And it just kept being too big. So, just like I am no longer fighting the natural curl in my hair, I am no longer fighting the yarn/needles/guage for this hat.

I went up to #5s (which would be #7s for most of you)to get a 4st = 1" guage and then cast on 87 stitches instead of 116. That worked okay, until I got to top shaping. Then, the decreases were just going too slowly. So I added some extra decreases to get the length I wanted.

All in all, it's a nice hat. Especially since I basically did everything wrong from the start. But, the stranding certainly makes it warm, and it is really handsome.

Speaking of handsome, here is one more shot of T.