FO: Upper East Slouch

My gorgeous, former Elite model friend S and I went shopping the other weekend at Bloomingdales and Saks, hoping to find some great after-Christmas deals (we did). As usual, she looked stunning and very artfully put together topping off her sleek winter ensemble with a mustard yellow chunky-knit beret. When I complimented her on the hat, she squealed that she loved it too, and wanted to go buy more. She was wearing this hat from Urban Outfitters. So, we skipped over to the nearest location only to find that they had just a few left in stock- and all in a mousy brown that was kind of blah with S's pale complexion. Poor S, not being a knitter, considered buying the dull brown one anyway because she loved the style so much. I grabbed it from her hands and examined it only to find that it was for 70% acrylic. Enough of this nonsense! I insisted that I knit her a hat in a fiber and flattering color of her choosing. She generously humored me, and said that she would love either a grey or green hat, and as for the other details- I should surprise her.

Pattern: Upper East Slouch- my own pattern

Yarn: Araucania Nature Wool Chunky, color unknown(sorry, lost the ball band)

Needles: Size 10 Clover bamboo circulars- Magic Looped

Reactions:

-Pattern:Great for knitting while reviewing season 3 of Lost on dvd.

-Yarn: This was my first time with this yarn, and I liked it. First, it was a huge deal at Webs, where I bought the hank for $4.99. There's a nice, subtle variation to the greyish lavender of this particular dyelot, which gave the boring 2x2 rib some extra interest. This yarn's a good basic- woolly without being too itchy- and I can see myself using a lot of this stuff in the future.

Here's the resulting hat, modeled by me after blocking:


Hopefully I'll be able to update this post with an S-modeled picture soon. I liked the simplicity and instant gratification of knitting this hat so much, I knitted another version for myself last night out of a slate colored Araucania Nature Wool Chunky. Pictures of that coming soon too.

And how about this for a coincidence!? I read this post the other day about a very similar hat seen on the lovely Scarlett Johansson.