Reboot

I came home from choir last night, pulled off my cast-on stitches for Sbodd's hat, and started over. I've not been happy with the cast-on edges of my work so far so I pulled out my Stitch 'n Bitch book to try a different type of cast on, to see if I could get a tighter, cleaner first row. The book calls the one I used the double cast on, but I've seen it called a long-tail cast on as well. Anyway, it was fast and it looked fantastic, I was really happy with it. Much much better looking than my previous attempts. I was pleased. It shouldn't really have mattered on this project because the bottom of the hat will roll up naturally, but it's been something that's annoyed me on all three of my completed projects, and I didn't want another sloppy edge.

However, I'm not sure what I did, but I messed up somewhere and ended up with more rows on half my needle than on the other half, which...totally doesn't make any sense. I'd have to turn around in the middle of my work to do that. So, uh, yeah, no idea. :oP

So I'm back at square one again. Also, I had intended to use size 9 needles because the project calls for size 8 and I have consistently knitted at a tighter guage than what was called for, making my projects smaller than they should have been. It's good, by the way, that I chose to knit the large size on my hat because a smaller one would definately not have fit. Anyway, I realized I was knitting on size 8 needles just before I discovered my screw-up on the rows. I don't think I actually have a set of size 9 needles, so I will have to pick them up tomorrow so I can do it right. Out of curiosity I measured my abortive attempt and sure enough, it was at least two inches short of where it needed to be.

This will be at least attempt number 3 on this hat, which irks me, but oh well...everything can't be easy. ^_^

Edit: Ah ha - it turns out that I put my needle pairs together wrong, so I was using one #8 needle and one #9 needle. I dug through my basket and found the other mismatched pair, so now I do in fact have a complete pair of #9 needles. I r dum. Or possibly blind.