snow cap

My mother's Christmas gift from us this year was a subscription to a yarn club. Yes, it is exactly as it sounds. Just like the CD clubs of yesteryear, you sign up for a monthly shipment of yarn. I decided on Yarnbox, because it included both a knit and crochet pattern with every subscription, and reviews were positive.

(As an interesting aside, a few days after I put the Yarnbox subscription on my credit card, I received an e-mail from Citibank with the exciting news that I qualified for an extended warranty on my recent electronics purchase. I was mystified, and more than a little worried that my account had been hacked, until I realized they were referring to Yarnbox. Yarnbox, xBox... more than a bit of distance between those two on the technological scale, Citibank.)

January's shipment contained some really different yarn, both singles, one thin with metal disks threaded on it, and one thick. She decided to go with the pattern that was sent with it, called Snow Cap, which directed her to hold the yarn together and knit a cap with welted sides and a squared-off top.

The model for the pattern wore the hat pulled down to her ears. After finishing it, my mother tried this and texted me a picture. Let's just say that it was not an attractive look. It certainly didn't resemble the pictures in the pattern, which had a much more generous fit.

When I visited her house two weeks ago, she brought out the hat to show me. She considered it a total loss, but I thought it was kinda cute in a pillbox sort of way. Plus the colors are too pretty, and those metal disks too eye-catching, for it to sit in a pile of abandoned knits.

I perched it on the back of my head, instead of pulled down. Buy a yarn subscription as a gift, get a new hat in return. What a deal!

Many people commented that they had to add extra rows to the pattern so they could pull it down, because they didn't find it deep enough as written. I really like it this way though. While I am a huge hat fan, I am not usually a huge fan of how they look on me. I think this one passes the test.

Photos compliments of Terzo, who is my new go-to fashion photographer for obvious reasons. Now if I can just photoshop out those wrinkles...