I gotcher knittin' right here...

There are nasty rumors floating around the blogosphere. It's been whispered in some circles that Ragnar doesn't have the knit anymore (not true, the blogosphere cares not if Ragnar knits or doesn't but it makes for a dramatic opening).

Untrue! and to prove it I throw down the (100% washable Merino) gauntlet and say "bring on the pictures of ridiculous hats.
So there! And not only that, but for some unfathomable reason, adult men of my acquaintance have been clamoring to be decked in horns and rivets as well, so not only are there baby vikings running about the place, but full grown old-enough-to-know-better types as well.

Of course, they are happy to walk around in public looking like (ahem) fierce medieval warriors, but they will not condescend to be photographed for posterity, even if posterity is my humble low traffic blog.

I have knit this hat enough times that writing up the pattern for it has become inevitable. There were only two things stopping me. The first being that the whole thing was originally inspired by Chile Con Yarne's Viking Baby Cap. Well not exactly, it was inspired by my adorible...I mean ferocious nephew, but a quick google of the phrase "viking baby cap" brought me straight to Yarne's door. The second was that I've been cribbing the horn portion of the hat from Jen Stafford over the The Dominitrix. If you have her book, or her pattern you can do the same, but you're not going to learn her secrets from me, no no. As a finally-begining-to-publish designer I am suddenly quite sensitive to this whole copywrite thing that people are so anxious about.

However, I have decided that although inspired by, my version has enough variance from the orignial that I can claim it as "my" design, and tonight I polished up my knitting sticks and knit a totally passable "horn" that is all my own, short rows, slipped stitches, the whole shebang.

So watch this space! Sometime soon you to will be able to outfit your family and friends with knitted versions of kitchy viking helmets.

And in the mean time, I finally fixed the flame baby-hat pattern, which had a completely wrong flame chart in it...these things happen when you knit a lot of things with flames in them and completely fail to lable your notes.

And for those of you on Ravelry, I has finally got my own "store." Which has exactly the same stuff that's already posted here, but you know...it's in pdf format and you can save it in your Ravelry library and...and...yeah.

Ragnar...yes this is what I'm doing on christmas eve, SHUT UP.