Celtic Beanie

Hooray, it's finished. This was my first attempt at double knitting. It's cool enough looking just like that, but the great thing about double knitting is that it's two thicknesses of knit fabric, and is completely reversible.

Neat, huh? The part isn't so neat is that double knitting SUCKS. It's quite miserable, really. In the time it took to make this hat, I could've had two and sewn them together, and enjoyed the process much more. It's sooooooo slow. This hat is ridden with mistakes where I swapped colors, or twisted my yarns. It's essentially like knitting two hats at the same time, only you're knitting one inside out, and you have to alternate every other stitch. It gets even more complicated when you add in a colorwork pattern like this celtic knot. Sadly, it'll probably just be a camping hat, as I don't think it's good enough to wear in public. My original intention was to make one for Andrew, to keep his head nice and toasty next winter while he's working out in the cold. Then I decided to knit one for myself first for two reasons: I wanted to try out this brown yarn and see how I like it for next-to-skin wear, since I have 8 skeins of it and thought about making a sweater. I also wanted to practice this double knitting thing before I made him one, so his didn't suck. Yeah, well. He's gonna get a regular ol' single thickness hat. I won't be double knitting again any time soon. I'm glad I tried it though.

Pattern: Celtic Beanie from Son of Stitch & Bitch by Debbie Stoller
Needles: size 8 circs & dpns
Yarns: pink is Lamb's Pride worsted, brown is some unknown yard sale yarn, 100% wool