Go boldly forward and make hats

or...  Avery's "Mistake" Mistake Rib Hat.

I am not always right.  In fact, I am frequently wrong.  Often, I believe myself to be right, when it is very clear to others that I am certainly not.   In life, this can be trickersome.  In knitting... it sometimes leads to surprisingly pleasing results.     An example...

I set myself the task of knitting my sister's fiance a hat for Christmas.   I am completely ignoring the truth that today is the 5th of January, and that the finished hat, which should most definitely already be living at Avery's house, if it were actually to have been his Christmas present, is in fact still sitting here beside me.  Ahem.  

I had suggested to my sister a few weeks earlier that she embark on a mistake rib scarf that I had seen on another knitting blog years ago.  This one.

And before I go on any further, I should stop and fill you in:
(on the off chance that you are still reading along and that you care at all what Mistake Rib is...)

First, a "rib" is a pattern of stitches that follows like this:

Row 1: K K P P K K P P --->
Row 2: K K P P K K P P <---
Row 3: K K P P K K P P --->
Row 4: K K P P K K P P <---

and it looks like this

http://nownormaknits2.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c50b853ef01053617c181970c-800wi

Isn't that nice?  I like that hat.

Mistake Ribbing goes like this:

Row 1: K K P P K K P P K --->
Row 2: K P P K K P P K K <---
Row 3: K K P P K K P P K --->
Row 4: K P P K K P P K K <---

See how the K's and the P's line up nice in the regular rib (because of the even number of stitches), but they do not line up in the "mistake" rib (because of the odd number of stitches)...
hence - the "mistake".

This "mistake" actually produces a very cool looking stitch pattern, and I thought it would look great in a hat.  I looked in vain for a mistake rib hat pattern and then gave up.

I don't need a pattern, I'll do it myself!!!  (I might have added "dammit" at the time... I get really testy when I waste time on the internet looking for patterns that do not exist.  Go ahead and look.  I dare you.)

Anyway, because I had read a mistake rib scarf pattern exactly once in my life, I naturally believed myself to be an expert - so I just set off with confidence.  I grabbed some worsted weight yarn from my basket and cast on an odd number of stitches: 63.  Because that felt about right.   I joined for knitting in the round.  I figured, because I have an odd number of stitches here, and I'm knitting in a circle... all I have to do to produce a nice mistake rib pattern is knit 2 purl 2 around and around and around, and wa-la!! I'll have a mistake rib hat.

This -

- was a mistake.

What I have is most certainly NOT mistake rib.  It is, instead, a new stitch pattern that looks like this:

row 1:  K K P P K K P P K --->
row 2:  K P P K K P P K K --->
row 3:  P P K K P P K K P --->
row 4:  P K K P P K K P P --->

I realized I had made a mistake on my mistake rib in about my 20th row.  I probably said "dammit" again and went to bed.

But who remembers?

At any rate, I have decided to embrace this new stitch pattern I have created, and furthermore, I have convinced myself that I created it intentionally.

And so - what I have now to offer you is a nice little hat pattern so that you can whip up a hat for yourself this winter if you like:

  Avery's Mistake Mistake Rib Hat

*** and the knitting moral of this story is: there truly are no mistakes in knitting if you can just firmly believe that whatever you made is what you intended to make all along.  ***

So go forth boldly and knit!!!