La Vie En Noir

Me, I am so chic. Oui oui. So chic.

Well, the model was a little fussy (SUCH a diva), but here she is, showing off the Moss Stitch Christmas Beret for my FIL!

I fold
One of the great things about this pattern is the brim - you start off with a provisional cast-on, then fold it up and knit the cast-on together with the working stitches a few inches later. This gives you a nice, cushy, very polished-looking brim! The rest of the hat is done in moss stitch, which adds great texture, plus an i-cord crest for the perfect finishing touch.

Twice as nice! Even if you made me frog. Wait - frog, French, get it? BAHAHAHAHA!

Minoring in mods
I actually had to knit this twice - the first time, I ran out of yarn about midway through the decreases (that's two projects in a row - hmmm, let's hope that little streak ends. now.). That ended up being a blessing in disguise - I tried it on and even right on target with gauge, it was HUGE. So I frogged it all back, cast on 10 fewer stitches, and decided to use a contrasting color for the inner brim. (Tip: If you don't want the contrasting color to peek out, knit a few more rows of the main color than you did for the contrasting color).

Another change I made on the second pass was to stick with my 7 needle after the brim, rather than going up to size 10s (!) like I did on the first try. Good thing I did - as you can see, it has plenty of drape as is! If I'd gone up to 10s to hit gauge, FIL probably would have looked like that dude on Fat Albert with the hat hanging all over his face.

Since I had 10 fewer stitches than called for, I did have to to wing the final few decrease rows - if memory serves, when I reached 12 stitches, I k2tog'd down to 6 stitches, then k1/k2tog'd down to 4, then did the i-cord.

It's like..like...a big, moss stitchy pancake. Yum.

Speaking of decrease rows, there were a couple of notes in that section that weren't quite clear to me at first - for example, it says, "at the 4 sts after the marker, 4 sts should be decreased down to 2 as follows". I wasn't sure if I should decrease the 4 stitches after the marker, or knit 4 stitches, then decrease the next 4 (it's the former). Also, if I were to knit this again, I'd probably skip the PSSOs in favor of k2togs and ssks, as passing stitches over to the right is kind of a pain.

Other than that, it's an excellent pattern, easy to knit with fabulous results! I even had a little bit of black left over, go figure!

That's a wrap
Hopefully this is the kind of beret he wanted! Hubster seems to think so. He deemed it very FIL. I'm very pleased with how it came out, too. So much, in fact, that it's making me a little nostalgic about our few days in Paris last year. I think I'll play up some La Vie En Rose and have a cafe before lunch.

Beau-pere Beret
Pattern: Moss Stitch Beret by Kent's Craft
Yarn: Berroco Pure Merino, 2 balls of black + 12 grams of dove
Needles: H&S rosewood, size 7, 16"
Mods: Reduced number of stitches by 10, knitted all on 7s, winged final few decreases, and used contrasting yarn for inner brim.