ROSEBUD

I really wanted to get my needles into some of our new Studio Donegal Soft Donegal, and of course it is hat season, so I decided to try a new pattern that I’ve been eyeballing for a number of years.

The pattern is Rosebud, and it worked up extremely well with the Soft Donegal! The yarn softened up and bloomed after blocking (I washed it in Eucalan and laid it flat to dry). It’s a really nice tweed, a good compromise – it has the body and most of the memory of a traditional tweed, but it’s MUCH softer.

The pattern is only written for one size, and I made the slouchy version. I found that it is a size large, it should fit a 22″ to 23″ head comfortably – the hat is much too large for my little 21″ head. If I were to do it again for my little noggin I would omit about 20 stitches from the pattern. Most of the hat is knit in a plain garter stitch, so playing with the numbers is pretty easy.

Materials

• Studio Donegal Soft Donegal: 1 skein (colour 5231B)
• 4mm/US6-16″ circular needles
• 5mm/US8-16″ circular needles
• 5mm/US8 double pointed needles
• cable needle
• stitch marker
• Pattern Download

CHART HACKS

Sometimes people find working from a knitting chart a little bit hard, but there are hacks you can use to make your life easier!

1. Sometimes the symbols all kind of look alike in the grid. To make things a bit easier to read, I colour in my chart with coloured pencils. Each symbol gets its own colour, no two are alike (I don’t bother colouring in the plain knit or purl stitches).
2. I generally keep my chart & pattern in a plastic sleeve (I get them at an office supply store, they’re cheap and plentiful). This keeps it clean, and none of my papers get lost, banged up, or accidentally waterlogged.
3. Keeping track of two sets of instructions at the same time can get me off track, so if I have other things to do in the pattern at a certain point in the chat, I make a note on the chart reminding me before I start. For example, If I have to start a bunch of decreases at row 37, I’ll make a little note “Dec” next to that row. This is especially useful if your other pattern instructions are on another page.
4. To keep track of which row I am on, I use a conventional row counter, but I also use Highlighter Tape to help keep my eyes focused on the right part of the chart.