We are home at last! Hat and scarf complete, with much washing, shopping, cleaning, injecting of IVF meds etc to be done.

Hat Pattern: El Hatto Negro,
Hat Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran in colour 300105 (chocolate brown)
Hat Needles: US 4 & 6 Boye Needlemaster interchangeable needle and a set of the worst 4mm DPNs in the world.

Scarf Pattern: 34 stitches of 2*2 ribbing,
Scarf Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran in colour 300105 (chocolate brown)
Scarf Needles: 5mm Addi circular

Read on to see all the photos of Jesse’s hat growing on the road home.

This photo was taken just near Murray Bridge, I had just changed onto the bigger needles, I had about half this when we left Adelaide an hour or so earlier. I had just fixed a mistake I made in the joining row 8 rows earlier - note for next time the yarn should be held in back as you join!

This is what the back of the broken rib looks like, I don’t know what I thought it would look like but this surprised me. This stitch pattern makes such a wonderfully thick and squishy fabric, which is just delicious knit up in the Debbie Bliss Cashmerino.

Somewhere long the way I also managed to get a photo of the scarf waiting in the wings…

Can you see that dent in the fabric? That is what happens when you forget to slip a stitch on the slip stitch round. Very annoying, I had to fix 4 of 5 of these through the course of the hat, most of them at the start.

I can’t tell you how glad I was that I now always carry a crochet hook in my knitting bag!

The Manangatang sign that Jesse just had to have a photo of. Jesse points out that any Manangatang sign would have been an acceptable, this was just the one we happened to stop for.

I can’t remember which town this was, perhaps it was West Wyalong. Jesse tells me it was Wyalong.

It was only when it came time to change to DPNs that I realised I didn’t have any. This is one of the definite upsides of the interchangeable needle set - I was able to make two circs with the right size needle on one end and the next size down on the other and keep knitting until we reached a town where I could buy a set of DPNs.

A short and unscheduled stop somewhere near Bathurst. I was on the phone to the accounts department at my IVF clinic trying to pay for my cycle and Jesse couldn’t take the suspense of whether I would drive out of range while giving my amex number any more.

These are the DPNs I bought in Grenfell. They may be the worst knitting needles I have ever used, blunt, grabby, bendy, ugh. But they got the job done and I finished the hat just as we pulled in to Katoomba. I then knit madly on the scarf the rest of the way home and wove the last end as we pulled into our street.