Just in Time for Summer

When I showed Rob the pattern for MK Carroll's Matilda hat, he said, "That looks like a hat you would lose."

He had a point. When we drove across country to see my family for Christmas two years ago, I left a very similar brown cloche in a pool hall in Memphis. In a strange twist, I found the exact same hat two days later at the French Market in New Orleans, only to leave it in a restaurant when we got back to Los Angeles.

Undeterred, I ordered enough black yarn last summer to make one for my business partner and one for me. I finished hers in a week, but as of March, I hadn't even cast on the one for me. I just couldn't bring myself to knit it in black. Brown is my color of choice for a cloche and I'd knit mine in brown no matter how much it tempted fate.

I had some chunky alpaca laying around that I'd been meaning to find a use for. I knit it on larger needles and used black to attach the brim to the top, for a slightly different aesthetic. I felted it slightly and will post pix of the final product once I get Rob to snap one of me wearing it.

I have a pretty tight tension, so the edge of the brim rolled a bit, but it worked itself out in the felting process! One bummer is that I ran out of brown a few rows before the brim was done. I used black for those last rows instead and wear the black patch over one ear. Surprisingly, it doesn't look like a mistake!