Pattern: Salted Caramel

Designer: Isabel Kraemer

Yarn: (This one comes from deep, deep down in the stash.) The main color is Classic Alpaca (100% superfine alpaca) from the Alpaca Yarn Company in color #2250, which is a kind of butterscotch-y gold. I don’t know the weight, but it feels like/acts like/gauged like DK. There are 110 yds per skein, and I used  1 full skein and . . . maybe another 1/3 of a second. It’s really nice yarn, and I know I picked it up at the Michigan Fiber Festival with my mom, so it was pre-2016 (and I’m thinking WAY pre-2016). The contrast color is an unlabeled remnant of Rowan Felted Tweed, possibly in the color Carbon (label is AWOL. . . ). I didn’t use much.

Needles: US 5s for the ribbing; US 7s for the body of the hat

Finished: Mid-January; this hat only took a few days to knit up.

Notes: I knit the middle size; no major modifications. Although there was some weirdness for the middle size in the set-up for the decreases. I think the weirdness was necessary for holding the pattern straight through the decreases, but it required uneven spacing of the stitches for the decrease set up, and y’know . . . that just made my eye twitch. So I went my own way when it came to setting up for and doing the decreases. ‘Nuff said.

I will note that I didn’t like the slip stitch patterning for a long way into the knitting. It just looked weird, even though it was right. Not my favorite design, although the hat fits nicely and is warm.

What will I do with it? I’ve got it in my “hat basket” and I’ll work it into my regular, winter dog-walking hat rotation.

Photo gallery: