I spent pretty much all of yesterday tracking down 8 skeins of Rowan Magpie Tweed. The only colour I can get is nice, but not really what I had in mind for Rogue so before I buy it I am waiting for office hours to arrive in Perth so that I can call Jo Sharp’s studio and ask if I have a dodgy batch of yarn that can simply be replaced. I really want to like this yarn, and I love the colour. I joined the Rogue along and none of the participants who used JS Aran Tweed have mentioned gauge problems that I can see, though none of them seem to have used this colour. Suffice to say I am not quite prepared to give up on my yarn yet but I do feel much better having a back up plan.

In the mean time I have swatched and cast on for Jesse’s hat. I am using’s Julia’s pattern El Hatto Negro and I am even more wildly off gauge with this than I was swatching for Rogue. Only this time being off gauge makes me happy. Jesse’s head is enormous, 25″ type enormous, it does match rather nicely with his 6′7″ frame and size 16 feet, but never the less the hat would not have fit him as written and being off gauge means it will fit and I don’t have to do any maths myself.

I cast on using the same alternate cable method I used for Shedir and then found that due to the way the broken rib works the ribbing moved over one stich two rows into the hat and looked really awful.This morning I ripped back to the first row and re knit the second and third rows with a slight modification to prevent this jumping effect:

row 2: *slip 1 st knitwise with yarn in back, k1* to last stitch.
round 3: After row 2, you will keep working in the same direction, With yarn in back slip 1 st purlwise from left needle (it was already slipped knitwise and twisted on the previous row) and this forms the join to work in the round, place marker and follow pattern as written.

I would show you a photo but this yarn is too hard to photograph and I don’t have the time to win the battle with my camera. Instead I will leave you with a photo of our kitties. After two years living with my mother they will be moving back in with us in only a few months time and we are all so excited, though the cats are hiding thier excitement well.