FO: Shedir

I skipped out on SnB tonight to watch some tv. That left me with some time to finish off an old project.

Pattern

Shedir by Jenna Wilson. Great pattern, I'd love to make another one!
Approximate dimensions:

• unblocked: 8.5 in (21.6 cm) diameter, 7 in (17.8cm) depth brim to crown
  
• after very gentle blocking: 10 in (25.4 cm) diameter, 8 in (20.3cm) depth brim to crown. The hat gained 18% in width and 14% in depth.
  

Yarn

Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk DK (used 52.7 g) on US 3 (3.25 mm) Inox/Prym needles. I used the 2 circulars method when there were too few stitches for a 16 inch circular.

The fabric I got as the final product is a little dense, which is fine for a hat, but still drapes well. The cable pattern shows up reasonably well after blocking and running a pumice stone very gently (I left most of the fuzz alone) over the fabric. Alpaca Silk doesn't tolerate frogging very well, and will pill with frequent handling, such as when you're knitting with it.

Mods

Like Eunny, I only did 3 repeats of the Saxon braid. My intuition about the yarn was that it would bloom after washing, and it did.

In hindsight, should have gone down a needle size for the ribbing at the bottom: as you can see from the photo below, the bottom looked sloppy. On the other hand, there was no fracking way I was going to rip out the tubular cast on, so I ran some elastic thread through the ribs near the cast-on edge. I think it turned out OK.

I now have 42.1 g of Alpaca Silk to use up, probably as embellishment on a small project, preferably not near any stress points.

I used this project as an experiment to see how a garment knit in this yarn would turn out (Elizabeth Zimmermann recommended knitting hats as gauge swatches, which is genius). Based on this experiment, I'd knit patterns from the Alpaca Silk books with sturdier yarns with at least some wool content.