Solo knitting and the berets

The last couple of months haven't been good group knitting months for me.

Since I got back from Cleveland, eight local group knitting events that I've been known to attend have been scheduled.

Of those, two have been canceled due to rain or fire and I've now missed four of the others. I have managed two of the three Whistlestops since I've been back but the none of the Knitnites nor the Knit togethers.

I'm feeling pretty solo on the knitting front and was really looking forward to this evening's post work get together even though it makes for a very long day.

I arranged the day to run errands and go into work later than usual. It was all going according to plan until one of my tires gave into a fatal attraction for a nail. So I did some unanticipated knitting at Discount Tire and working from home. By the time the tire was fixed and sorted, even the allure of a group knitting fix wasn't enough to join the misery of a North bound trip.

Yesterday I finished knitting the blue beret while on walkabout and moved onto finishing up the orange.

The orange will follow the same morph into circle path of the Borjana beret and the Universal Yarn's acrylic versions.

The blue began as a pentagon and did not morph into a circle.

Instead, once it reached the stitch count where it could easily have made the transition from pentagon to circle, it followed the knit with no increase path of my top down twist on traditional tam/beret construction before decreasing as if it was a circle. It will rely on blocking and the decrease strategy to mimic a circle. In the photos, the pink yarn marks the end of the increases.

The difference between the two methods are subtle and most pronounced from the flat side views.

Since the Borjana beret shifts from reverse stocking to stocking on the decrease side, and because it's the only one using the increase to diameter and decrease back that's done, I've used it as the comparison piece.

When viewed from the top or bottom, there's almost no discernible difference between the differently constructed hats. This shouldn't come as a big surprise since they are all approximately the same diameter.

I put together a little hat sandwich to show how all three of the Cleckheaton hats (beige, blue & orange) compare.

Only the beige, with the additional rows to arrive at the same diameter, will not block flat.