Bobbles and cables and ribbing, oh my!

So about a week ago N apparently left her winter hat on the floor of the WalMart we were in. I usually let her keep it on and play with it a bit when we first get in a store and then eventually she will hand it to me or I will be able to take it without a tantrum. When we went to leave, it was not in my bag and not in the basket and she must have ditched it over the side when I wasn't looking. We had been all over the store, so while I wheeled back around and looked in two departments, there wasn't any way for me to go all the way back through every aisle we had been down.

Well, "I'm a Knitter", I thought. "I'll just whip out another hat."

Then I got obsessed with wanting to do bobbles on it. I love bobbles on kid hats. I searched Ravelry and couldn't find a pattern I was satisfied with. I searched my stitch dictionaries and decided I wanted a bobble cable, but there wasn't one already charted out that I liked. So I sat down with my charting software one evening and charted out a simple pattern I thought would work.

After almost two days, I was finally ready to cast on. Seriously. I could have knit a simple ribbed cap in one or two evenings, and here I was just now starting. It was 25 degrees outside and there was no way she was leaving the house without a hat and here I was fiddling around. But obsession won out.

It's really not fluorescent pink.

Then I spent two days over the weekend knitting cables and bobbles. Knitters know that as small as it was, this was not a speedy knit. I cable without a needle, which makes it faster for me, but still. I had envisioned a square hat that would flop in the corners and I would trim the top with 20 bobbles and then tassels in the corners. But it did not flop. I forgot to increase my needle size after the ribbing, so my gauge was pretty tight and I never added increases. It fit, but looked more like a baby pink chef's hat than anything else. So I frogged all 20 (!) of the top bobbles and about two inches of the pattern, including more bobbles and cables. Did an I-cord bind-off, gathered a piece of yarn through the bobbles nearest the top, wove in my ends and called it done.

It actually turned out really cute. She didn't want to take it off. I may publish the pattern if I can get my act together. It's already charted, but writing it out may be more effort than I want to put forth. :-)