Is this what they mean when they talk about backwards knitting?

So, before Christmas, I made myself this nice cashmere hat. It's Devon's Toque from Handmaiden. The cashmere is like buttah, and knit up so fast, it was ridiculous. Even though I cast on for the hat three times, it was still super fast.

The first time I cast on with the right number of stitches, I didn't like the way the brown and black was pooling. Basically, half the hat was brown, the other was black. Not very good, in my opinion. I also thought it would be a little small, so I decided to cast on with 8 more stitches (2 more 2X2 ribs) but it didn't do much to reduce the pooling, and it still looked smallish. I cast on again with 8 more stitches. That was what seemed to work like a charm. I liked the spiral / striping effect, when I put the first few inches on a string and 'tried it on', it fit like a glove.

Well, when the whole thing was finished, the hat ballooned at the bottom. I knew that cashmere relaxes a little, but this relaxed A LOT!

Also, since I'd added so many stitches, I didn't have the length that I wanted. Even though in this picture, I have it folded nicely, when it's on my head, I can only get about 1cm of a fold, which looks weird. Jenn will be posting pictures of me in the hat when she gets around to posting about the Fibonacci socks.

Anyways, I didn't like the look of the hat. I loved the feel of the cashmere, and I'd invested $40 in the one skein of it, so I darn well wanted something that I'd love.

So, this happened....

It got ripped out and skeined on my new niddy noddy.

This is the yarn after it was skeined up. Amazing how quickly (about 2 months) the kink gets in the yarn.



Which meant soaking it,


And then drying with a little weight. I use a full spray bottle.


And then finally, the re-tied skein, looking just about as awesome as it did before I made the hat. I'll have to dig up the little endy bit that I had -just in case I need when I re-knit it.



So, what am I going to knit this up into? I'm thinking about this hat pattern - which should work with the stitch count I need, and I like how the top decreases are done.