WIP: Panda Hat

“I’ll just knit a basic white hat and throw a panda face on it! What could go wrong?”

Ravelry Project Page: Panda Hat

I started to knit the panda face stranded, but ended up with floats that were too tight, despite trying to be conscious to make them loose. The nose and the right eye patch puckered. And the left eye patch did this thing where the entire left side of the black patch wasn’t anchored in any way to the white stitches next to it.

I put in a life line so I could rip back to a row before the chart.

nose puckered

apparently the whole side of this eye patch section did not attach to the white stitches

  
  
  

What worked:

• Duplicate stitch for the mouth (like here). I think it looks much better as a duplicate stitch than it did when stranded.

• An intarsia/stranded hybrid for the nose and eye patches. The white yarn was stranded across the back of the black sections but for each black section, I used a different ball of black yarn. Worked R to L in the black sections for a couple of rows and then L to R, by slipping the stitches to the right needle, turning the work and purling the black stitches, then slipping them back to the correct needle. (Like here)

So far, the nose looks great. It lays nice and flat and the white floats aren’t in the way. Hopefully the eye patches will work as well.