Hat hankering part two

Remember previously I mentioned that an inexplicable hat hankering had come over me?

Here is the product of obsessive hat knitting number two. The Short Row Hat designed by Veronik Avery from the Winter 05 IK (pattern available on their website here [pdf]).

I'm shy.

Since the called-for yarn sounded exotic and unavailable, I've been quietly googling it to see what other people had used. I'd pretty much settled on substituting Karaoke after seeing Cheryl's version here, and put that on the mental to-buy list. (It's a short list, no need to write it down.)

Meanwhile, through a series of strange events, Jennie accidentally wound up in possession of an object of mine (sounds mysterious, doesn't it! OK, explanation starts here and ends here) and when she mailed it back to me she very generously threw in a skein of Malabrigo (colour: Frost) which immediately begged to be made into this hat I'd been hankering for! (With service like this, I must organise to have my possessions accidentally land at Jennie's house more often...)

I loved making this hat. I started and finished it during my Easter break. I will definitely make it again, because there is an imperfection I must rectify next time:
The pattern calls for a provisional cast-on, then K1 row, then the short-row pattern begins. At the end, we are instructed to do a 3 needle bindoff of the live sts and the provisional row. This results in a rather unsatisfactory ridge of bumps along the back of the hat. Next time I will cast on and K2 rows so the short-row pattern starts on the flip side of the work. (At least I think that will work. I have to have it in my hands to figure it out.)

Just in case you want to substitute Malabrigo to make yourself a short-row hat, here is the low-down. I used size 8 bamboo needles, sentimental ones, from Crystal Palace, my first ever mail-order knitting purchase, made in 1997. I had to work an extra repeat of the four pattern sections to get a suitable circumference, and instead of picking up 32 sts to shape the crown, I only picked up 14 because the hat was already tall enough and then some. I only used about 80g of the 100g skein so there's probably enough left over for some small wristies to match!