Pattern: Porom by Jared Flood/Brooklyn Tweed
Yarn: Aslan Trends Artesanal, 40%cotton, 30% alpaca, 30% polyamide, 1 skein
Needles: US 6 and US 8 circulars; I used my Addi Turbos
I finished this back at the beginning of October and then packed it up to go in a care package for kidlet; it took me a while to mail off the package but she has it now. I kept eating the cookies I was supposed to send her and in fact she still hasn't gotten the cookies (from Yama's Market on Young St. – the oatmeal chocolate chip are crunchy bite-sized delights). I'd seen a lot of slouchy hats around, and tried not to stare too hard at a young woman on the city bus, who was wearing a slouchy lace beret that looked like it was knit with a variegated sock weight yarn. I made a couple of quick sketches in my notebook and then decided that the smartest thing for me to do, if I intended to actually get a hat done while something warm was still needed, was to use an existing pattern. I bought the pattern on Ravelry and then wrote down the yarn information in my journal, and bought the yarn at The Naked Sheep Knit Shop in Portland while I was there. This project moved quickly; the yarn is delightful (a wonderfully soft, warm blend that has the warmth of alpaca with more body from the cotton) and the pattern is very clearly written. This was a great commute project (even though the yarn sheds enough so that I got off the bus looking like I'd hugged an alpaca), and I placed markers to separate the repeats. As long as I remembered to shift all the markers (in the same way that the beginning of round marker is shifted in the instructions), the markers kept me on track.
Overall, I think this is a great pattern that works up quickly enough so that you won't be the last person on the block to have a slouchy lace hat this season.
