hat fail

Drambuie is chugging along. I'm on to the back piece now, and I'm happy to say the yarn largely survived the Unfortunate Scissors Encounter after all! It turns out that Daniel had knocked the yarn on the floor accidentally, where it got tangled. When he couldn't fix it, he tried cutting it instead. Bless his heart, he was actually trying to help. He still lost TV privileges for a day, but all is forgiven, the yarn spit-splices beautifully, and even though I had to toss a big tangle in the trash, I have enough remaining.

My husband turned 34 on Monday. I made him an awesome dinner of homemade falafel, hummus and pita bread with salad and cake for dessert. I also knit him a hat, not that he needs it right now. We are having an extended patch of warm weather to usher in an early spring; some people have daffodils blooming already, and that's almost unheard of in March! Anyway, the hat is Asheboro, a charming pattern by Mandy Powers:



I used Berocco Ultra Alpaca (worsted weight), which is a good, plain workhorse yarn but it feels fabulous to knit with, and since it's 50% alpaca, the finished product is quite warm.

There's just one problem with it. Can you see what it is, even in my craptastic self-portrait shots?




Yup, it's a little too long in the ribbing. I did that on purpose, thinking for sure Stuart would want a larger brim. The problem is, for the neat little color work pattern to show, the hat comes down over his eyes, and if he folds up the brim, it covers the pattern. Drats. I may be able to shorten the ribbing by running a lifeline through it, cutting it off, and doing a new bind-off, maybe even in the contrasting color. Or, I could just pull it out to the color work part and move that up closer to the crown so as to preserve the deeper ribbing. What do you guys think?