A tale of three hats

I've recently rediscovered the joys of travel knitting. Small projects in just one color work particularly well (the mittens I'm working on here and there are a perfect size to stick in my bag but the two colors are too diddly for wrangling on the train). I've got a lovely little baby sweater to share once I get around to taking FO shots. And I'm currently working on a cowl during my train rides to and from work - a great way to start the day. Did I mention I'm using quiviut? Enough said. 

But before that, I knit three hats. The same hat, in fact, three times in a row. It's a good thing I like Jared Flood's Habitat pattern, because three iterations of anything is one and a half times too many, in my book. 

First, Mr. Tinks and Frogs got a much needed new hat for the season. 

Knit out of one skein of Shelter on size 7 and 8 needles (7s for the ribbing, 8s for the body). A quick aside: did you know that Amazon sells addi lace needles? They even qualify for Amazon Prime, which means if you're in a bind and really want to start the hat while on a trip but can't, for the life of you, find the 16" needles you could have sworn you had, you can ship the needles to youself overnight for a very reasonable price. Don't ask how I know that ...

Miss Tadpole needed a new hat, too, and the yellow she picked out at our LYS seemed perfect for Habitat. 

So I knit another one. Version 2 is in String Theory dk weight, a superwash merino. It's lovely stuff but a bit splitty and I had much more fun knitting the cables with a very pointy needle than with the more blunt bamboo circular I started with. 

The main cables on Habitat are a bit uninteresting for me but I absolutely adore the cables on the crown. 

There was just one little problem with this yellow hat (you've probably already noticed it): it's a bit too small. The first yellow hat was knit on 4s and 5s, with the charts for the shorter version. I'm not going to say that my girl has a big head, but it's certainly bigger than I had guesstimated. Maybe next time I'll actually measure. 

So I knit version three on 5s and 6s, with the chart for the longer version and it's a great fit. 

(That's still version two in the picture. I just love this "daddy, let me fix that for you" shot.)

Now that my current travel project (the cowl) is almost done, I'm trying to figure out what next to take on the train. There are a couple of WIPs from the bottom of the knitting basket in the running. Tadpole has voted for the blue socks (Cookie A's Kai-Mei pattern, a perennial favorite of mine) while I'm leaning towards a silver colored scarf (Anne Hanson's fernfrost). We'll see what I feel like knitting next week. Thoughts?