Do you ever find yourself knitting away and not really loving it? I’ve really been in a bit of a slump this year knit-wise. There of course have been some mighty big distractions in my life (hello major move and new career choices!) but I really hadn’t found myself in love with my knitting lately.

Then this came along.

I recently took a trip to Harrisville Designs only because we passed signs for it on the way to the Pumpkin Festival or I never would have known it was so close! We ended up out in that area again for a work event for HWJF recently so I took a little detour. I’ll tell you more about some of the reasoning behind that trip in another post, but while I was there I picked up this skein of Shelter

and the pattern above. Lately I’ve only been interested in knitting things that are fairly simple, don’t take much time and produce a quick result. The cables in this hat might not necessarily be in keeping with these thoughts but it’s only a hat so how bad could it be?

It wasn’t bad at all. It was down right inspiring!

I forgot how much I love cables. I forgot how awesome it can be to look at a chart and see where the twists and turns will take you only to have them show up in the thing sitting in your lap. Cables in knitting are an amazing journey that I love to travel. This hat reminded me of this.

I just love the way the decreases came together at the top!

I made it for HWJF (as might be obvious by the color choice) and finished it in 3 days. This wasn’t the simplest of knits so the timeline tells you how much I couldn’t put this down.

He wore it to the Christmas parade we had in town the other day.

In fact, I think I need to make a second one for myself. But this project lit a fire under me for many other things…