The Photo Memes Hat and Scarf

After what I think of as the "hat epiphany" I had last year, when I realized I'd been knitting hats willy-nilly without thinking about what I'd wear them with and that I had hats that matched none of my coats and coats for which I had no coordinating hat, I added four new hat sets to my "to knit" list for this year. This post is about the first set. The project plan began when I came across Lion Brand's Amazing yarn at Michaels, in the Acadia colourway. I fell in love with it at first sight and decided it would be the perfect colour to wear with my spring green parka. I then selected a pattern to suit it: the Vrida Cabled Slouch Hat, designed by Jenifer Spock-Rank and shown above. I also decided I would knit a scarf to match.

I thought the Amazing yarn too expensive at full price, so for some months I dropped into Michaels once a week or so to see if it had gone on sale. Finally it was priced for clearance. I felt exactly like the woman in yellow depicted above. I promptly bought all four of the 50g skeins that the store had left. But 200 grams wasn't enough to make both the hat and scarf, so I called all the other Michaels stores in Toronto to ask if they had any skeins left. When none of them did, I ordered two more skeins from Amazon. They proved to be of a different colour lot, but in such a variable colourway that hardly mattered. When the Amazon skeins arrived, I began work on the hat, and once that was done I made the scarf. It soon became clear I had bought too much yarn and would have nearly two skeins left over. Oh well. I decided I would make a pair of slippers with the leftover yarn.

Then one day I lost a skein on the bus. I relieved my feelings by recreating the above photo meme, then I went down to the TTC lost and found (twice!) in the hopes that whoever found it had turned the lost skein in. No one had.

At least I had the extra skein with which to finish my project. I'm really very pleased by the way this project turned out.The lovely glowing colours of the yarn are such a pleasure to look at, and the set will look very nice with my spring green parka as well as an olive velvet jacket I have. The parka was bought at a thrift store about 14 years ago and is looking the worse for the wear, so will probably be replaced soon, but the plan is to replace it with a turquoise or teal parka, and this set will also go with that. As you can see, I have definitely learned my lesson about planning my hat-making projects more carefully. The new photo meme aspect to the process just happened.