I finished the chunky cabled tam from Fall/Winter 2008 Knit.1 of yesteryear in a luscious red Lustra yarn that was not only an incredibly fast knit (as I started late last night) but also deliciously satisfying. I came across one small problem. The brim. I should have been skeptical to begin with. The pattern calls for 50 sts cast-around for the brim in a p1-k1 ribbing in sized 7 needles double-stranded. I should have been more wary but I decided that perhaps the effort would be worth it as my gauge did match and perhaps it would come out a bit larger in the blocking. Blocking, as I took it, was the miracle worker of most wooly fibers and perhaps could perform a miracle once more beyond my shawls.
After binding off and sewing in loose ends, it went in for a dunk. A bit later I took it out its blocking bath and tried to stretch it over my head a bit to see how it fit. Ick, it was more snug wet than when it was dry and by snug I mean headachingly tight. I heard of two methods of which similarly liked-minded optimistic ravelry users have used post-bind-off to fix a tight brim on this pattern. One was to cut off the brim and knit it from the bottom (eep) and the other was just to stretch it over a small soccer ball. I've no heart to cut it at this hour so I opted to stretch it...and for once soccer would have been useful in my life but no dice. We are a non-soccer household and thus no soccer ball. Drats. I did a little impromptu substituting and fitted the whole thing over the largest measuring cup in the whole kitchen. It's a pretty huge measuring cup, I assure you.
Tadaa! It took some wedging down but it worked and now I've got it blocked to fit my head.
It's a rather huge muffin top of a hat and looking at how huge it is over the measuring cup makes me wonder how it will look by morning...hmmm.
