Hat Tribulations

Some people are sock knitters. Others want nothing more than to knit lace. Personally, although I've branched out recently, I am a hat knitter. I have knit more hats than anything else, possibly everything else combined. Hats are the only thing that I don't need a pattern for. I just knit. So why is a boring black hat kicking my ass?

Almost a year ago a friend asked for a basic, black hat. I finally started working on it yesterday, having reached the half-way point of the World's Most Boring Scarf. I looked up my notes for another friend's hat, cast on and knit. The problem is this particular friend is a big guy. We're talking 6 foot tall, 300-pound black belt. This was the person that I was going to call if I ever got into trouble. But, anyway, big guy, proportionately big head. I looked at what I had knit, measured my gauge (no, I didn't swatch. It's a hat.) and worried about it for a while. Despite my Wayward Boyfriend knowing this particular friend longer than I've been alive, he was no help. "Do you think Colt's head is bigger than 22-inches?" "Okay, Colt's got a big head, but so does Drew. Do you think Colt's head is no bigger than one inch bigger than Drew's head?"
Him: "I don't know. I mean, Colt's a big guy, but his head's kinda small for his size." No help at all. I ripped out.

Cast on enough stitches to fit up to a 25-inch head, with the theory that the ribbing around the bottom will snug it in if need be. Zipping merrily, knitting until mid-night, and put it down, having finished the bottom ribbing and eight rows of stockinette. Go to bed, lay down, and the thought occurs to me. "Didn't Colt say he wanted a ribbed hat?" Yeah, I think he did.

So a simple black hat, a perfect counterpoint to the World's Most Boring Scarf, this World's Most Boring Hat, has know been ripped back twice so far. I want nothing more than to toss it in the giant grey Tupperware with the rest of my unused yarn and forget about it. The only thing stopping me is that I don't want to work on either of my other two projects, and I don't want four projects on the needles at one time. So I am valiantly knitting along, hoping to finish by tomorrow and move on to better projects. I have twelve rows.