Chris' Chulo

Two days before Christmas I came up with the idea to make a hat for one of my nephews. The pattern came from Marcia Lewandowski's "Andean Folk Knits: Great Designs from Peru, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador & Bolivia." The yarn came from the local yarn shop, J.J.'s Knitting Knook. While I was there I picked up green and brown wools for DH and a brighter red wool to go with the red from my stash which DS had already claimed. I'll use the same neutral for all three hats since it takes less than 50 yards per hat and the Cascade 220 I chose will do all three with some leftover.

This was the first time I'd worked with color stranding in the round. The process was much easier than I expected and I finished the hat Christmas morning thanks to DS deciding six o'clock was late enough for anyone to sleep on Christmas. Our family Christmas gathering was postponed due to the weather so I had time to block it, too. And I chose superwash wool so I don't have to worry about it felting when he throws it in the wash.

The only problem is that DH and DS both wanted that hat.

It didn't matter that I'd anticipated the problem and have yarn on-hand to make them each a hat from the same pattern. I placated DH by telling him that the thyme green I picked out for him will bring out the color of his eyes much better than the blue I chose for Chris and I explained to DS that I chose the red (his favorite color) with him in mind.

The masterstroke, though, was when I gave DH a piece of knitter's graph paper and told him he could design his own color band. He's thinking tanks and crossed sabers while DS is trying to decide between elven symbols and Warhammer 40K tyranids. As long as they can graph the designs on the paper in the space alloted and use no more than 3 colors to show the design, I promised to knit it. Wish me luck.