Hat number 3

At this stage I was feeling comfortable with knitting hats, so I decided to try my hand at designing one of my own. Using tricksyknitter.com, I drew out this fair-isle colour chart:

I based the rest of the pattern on the first hat I knitted, making the ribbing a bit longer so it could be turned up. Not everything went smoothly; the grey yarn I started with was much too thick, and I almost ran out of red yarn before finishing. This was all easy enough to fix, I bought new grey wool of the right thickness and tightened up the red stitches to make the yarn go further. Here's a picture I took halfway through; it shows the pattern better than any other photo I have:

(You can see the thick wool I started out with at the ribbing. I ripped this out later and knitted downwards to finish it off.)

The hat turned out to be nice enough to give to my boyfriend as a present. Here's a picture he took of me wearing it. The photo was taken with a film camera and I love how old it looks! I forgot to get a photo of my own before giving it away so I'm afraid this is the best I have: