Project Spotlight: Hermione Hearts Ron

Hi there! It's been awhile since I've written, so I decided to make a three part series highlighting projects I've finished over the past year. Somehow I'm still able to shove time knitting and crochet time into my busy schedule, so it's about time I share some of the items I've created!

Dates: October 10, 2012- March 13, 2014

Pattern: "Hermione Hearts Ron" by Christie Aylesworth

This pattern is based off the hat Hermione Granger wears in the third Harry Potter movie, and I honestly loved the softness and femininity of the hat when I first saw the movie. Luckily some fantastically geeky knitter loved it as well and wrote up a pattern for it, yay! I saw this hat made up at Yarns on First in Napa (My favorite yarn shop), where the owner kindly wrote down the name of the pattern for me. I bought yarn for this project there, but it just wasn't the right pink.

This would be a great pattern for anyone new to cables, lace, or charts, because it is fairly simple, straight-forward, and repetitive.

Deviations From Pattern: I used a smaller needle for the ribbing to make a tighter brim and I cast on using the ribbed/ alternating cable cast on, which I am quite fond of now.

I also made some big changes for the crown of the hat. I used a double decrease in line with the top of the cables to create an even-looking pattern. The fabric also lies more smoothly than how it was written in the pattern. 

Yarn: Joey's Baby Silk by Queensland Collection (60% wool, 20% silk, 20% bamboo)

In order to fulfill my fantasies for this project, I had to find a soft and feminine pink yarn. Although the Road to China Light, which this pattern originally calls for, is actually my #1 favorite yarn and it truly would have knitted up wonderfully in this pattern, I had to find the color I had been imagining. I have always been pleased with the Queensland Collection yarns I’ve bought, and this yarn is no exception. It is soft and dreamy, just like I had been fantasizing. With a smooth sheen and great stitch definition this yarn that makes the cables and eyelets look gorgeous. I hope I didn't make the yarn sound too desirable though because they don't make this yarn anymore. I'm sorry, my friends!

Where I Bought the Yarn: yarn.com and Babetta's Yarn in Fair Oaks, CA

I have an interesting story about the yarn for this project and of me being unrealistically lucky. I ran out of yarn during this project. I tried to reorder it, but having bought the yarn on clearance,  the yarn was out of stock by that time and it had been discontinued by the manufacturer. Months later, I stumbled upon the project in my UFO (unfinished object) pile and wondered if I should just rip it out or even just throw it away to rid myself the frustration of having to look at a project I could never finish. Fortunately, I resisted the urge to toss the whole project. Just a few days later I traveled to a yarn store I hadn’t been to before, and guess what I found there! Babetta, being a collector of discontinued yarns like myself, had the yarn I needed and there was ONE ball left of the same color I was using! When I got home, I compared the two balls of yarn to see if the dyes were much different from the different dye lots, but it turns out they were exactly the same because they were from the same batch. I think I've used up all my luck for a lifetime on that experience!

The End.