Free Rapunzel!

{I'm sorry if things looked out of place here yesterday...I decided spur-of-the-moment to give the blog a little facelift and clean things up a bit. I think I'm finished, except for updating the header sometime soon. I'm hoping to stitch a new piece for the header, but I'm not sure when I'll get around to it.}

I've been knitting for over two years now, and this is only the second hat I've made for myself. (Here's the first. I've made about seven hats in total: the other five went to my dad, brother, cousin, and niece.) That's probably because I'm not quite sure how I feel about hats. I love knitting them. They're quick projects that don't require much yarn. But I'm not sure if I can pull off wearing them.

But I've wanted to knit this hat for the longest time. It's just so fun and quirky that I don't really mind that it makes my big head look even bigger. :) And even if I only ever wear it while walking in the woods, it does a good job of keeping my head warm!

Of course the name comes from the long, awesome braids. By the way, I call this coat grandpa chic. :) My grandfather gave it to me because he didn't wear anymore and he heard me telling Mom that my old around-the-house-and-farm coat didn't fit anymore. (It has lots of pockets, which is very handy for stashing my camera and other things when I go walking.)

So I'm rather pleased with this hat, even if the yarn is a bit gross. It's mostly acrylic with only a tiny bit of wool, so it was not pleasant to knit with. But I had bought the yarn at least a year ago, just for this hat, so I figured I might as well use it. It has these random little bits mixed in to make it look tweedy, but the bits shed everywhere.

Also, the hat is a little big. I had to add extra stitches to the cabled brim to make it fit around my big head, but then I didn't need those extra stitches at the crown. I was too lazy to fix it, though, and it's not like it's so big that it's falling off or anything. :)

I really want to knit more hats now. :) Preferably ones with pompoms on top, because that just makes a hat so much more fun. 

{Ravelry project page here.}