Fish Fabulous

I really didn't want to knit those baby socks as I mentioned so sweetly in my last blog post. I tripped across the Fish Hat (Dead or Alive) from Knitty and knew immediately that I had to make it. It is one of the fastest things I've ever knit. I started on Tuesday and was finished Saturday night and I know I missed a couple of days of knitting in between.

I dug through my stash Tuesday morning before heading to work and found some great remnants of sock yarn and they all worked so perfectly. Cast on at knitting on Tuesday night.

I could not have been happier with how it turned out if I'd spent hours scouring yarn shops for the perfect yarns. I went into the project with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised with how great the yarn combo worked.

The finishing touch though are the eyes. I found sew on eyes at Jo Ann's after much digging. I knew the stick on kind would be a choking hazard. I attached them sitting in the car between church and the shower. But not while I was driving or even sitting in traffic. I was sitting in the CVS parking lot.

My pattern notes. I cast on the pattern recommended 90 stitches, but in sock yarn so it was baby sized. I knit the hat 4" from the longest part of the lips before starting to decrease. I used a beanie decrease for a rounded top. That meant more decreases in each row and more frequent decrease rows.

Decrease as follows:
K4, K2T
K
K3, K2T
K
K2, K2T
until I was close to 22. I had to fudge the last decrease row to end up with 22 stitches.

For whatever reason my tail did not turn out. I definitely did something wrong, but I didn't have time to try to figure it out. It was Saturday night and there were three fins still to add. I improvised by sewing the two tail pieces together and moved on. That is the one thing I could have had time to make right.

The fins are ingenious and I love that they are knit on. No sewing!

I plan to make an adult version of this, possible for our work Dirty Santa gift exchange. I'll stick a Starbucks card in for good measure, but I know there are some people who will like it.