The Snowball Is Rolling...

As Cassandra mentioned last week, we are thrilled that the release of What (else) Would Madam DeFarge Knit? is on the near horizon because, with this book, we become official, published (and paid!) knitwear designers. This prospect is both exciting and scary. We are going to be in the same book as some of our knitting heroes. Yikes!

That being said, we are exceedingly proud of the pattern we designed and are excited to see other people make it. I've nearly broken my fingers crossing them in hopes that there are no bad mistakes in the pattern. But I will accept all errata with grace and work hard to make sure we "clean up" the pattern as people work it.

The potential exposure that our pattern (and we) will be getting from the book has lit a fire under our collective butts. Cassandra and I have been talking, for a long time, about expanding our little online world and taking advantage of other crafting sites in order to reach more folks. To that end, we set up both Ravelry (DistractedMinds) and Craftsy (Mighty Distractible) pages. Starting immediately, we'll be loading all existing and new patterns to Craftsy (knitting/sewing/embroidery/etc) and all our existing and new knitting patterns to Ravelry. (It might takes us a bit so please be patient.) For those of you who have downloaded links to our Google Docs page for our existing patterns, those links will still be active.

Please visit our new pages and let us know what you think. Since we're still fairly new at this, any feedback will be appreciated. :)

In celebration of our new pages, today we're going to add the actual, final, tested "Hipster Hat" pattern that I started designing a couple of weeks ago. You may have read the original post (where I jumped the gun and posted the pattern before I'd actually finished test knitting the piece) or the update (where I THOUGHT I had a solution but still hadn't finished the second test knit). Well, I finally finished the pattern and I'm really happy with the result. It achieved exactly what I wanted - a loose-fitting hat with a large crown that would accomodate all my hair and not leave hat-marks on my 'do.

Hat pattern #1 resulted in a hat that was too shallow. Even though it had the large crown I wanted, it wasn't long enough and didn't cover my ears. Also, the decrease I used was too severe and, as a result, left big holes in the crown that had to be sewn shut. (annoying). I gave the hat to the smallest-headed person I know - Sara from my knitting group. Here she is, sporting the first test knit:

So, to fix it, I made the "cuff" over 2" long instead of 1" and I changed the decrease to both add some depth and also to close the holes that were created by the earlier severe decrease.

Here's the final hat:

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out! I've been wearing it a lot and have gotten quite a few compliments on it. I used a random, left-over skein of Cascade 220 but I think I'd like to make it again in a more exciting color. :)  Not that there's anything wrong with mushroom brown but...

So, please visit our Craftsy or Ravelry pages to download this new, free hat pattern! Thanks for continuing to read Mighty Distractible and for supporting us as we grow.

- Alex