FO: Pokemon Hat & Scarf Set

 

The final hat and scarf set was for my 11 year old nephew and I decided to make it Pokemon themed. He's been into Pokemon for years, so I knew this would be well received. I also knew I had the perfect yarns in my stash to make this happen, which is always nice.

The scarf was actually the first thing I made out of all of these gifts. I made it on the Sentro machine first, but I didn't like how the front yellow section had so many tucked stitches and it looked sloppy. When the Ravenclaw one came out so great on my flat bed machine, I decided to unravel this entire scarf and redo it on the Babylock machine and I'm so happy I did. 

I knew I had this almost full skein of Red Heart Super Saver yarn in yellow - I had only used it for little details here and there on toys over the years and it was in my Ravelry stash as 0.98 skeins left - but I had one heck of a time actually locating the skein. I found it amongst some skeins I had decided to donate years ago and then apparently never did. Good thing I didn't! I made this 50 stitches wide and just knit the yellow until it ran out, which didn't give me quite as long as I wanted it to be. Personally, I like my scarves to be long enough to easily double wrap around my neck and still show the end details, and my nephew is very big for his age, so I wanted this to be 72 inches. When the yellow ran out, I just color blocked in some black. This lead me down the very weird Mandela effect rabbit hole of whether Pikachu's tail has a zig zag of black at the end, which I always thought it did. Turns out that regardless of our personal thoughts on if it was changed at some point, the current games all have his tail as being all yellow and since that was what my nephew would know I just went with a straight transition to black instead of zig zagging it like I thought I would initially. he black is also Red Heart Super Saver, so the transition went well. I knitted about 15 inches more in black and then bound off.

I used kitchener stitch at the ends and mattress stitch along the sides - and man do these take a long time to seam together when they are so long. I took a photo of the kitchener end just to show how it looks. It does have a bit more bulk, but I just steamed the daylights out of it to lay as flat as possible.

The final touch was my home stitched Pikachu patch. I searched through the available Pikachu embroidery files and settled on this one because he looks so happy. This stitched out beautifully if I do say so myself. I used my same black linen scraps for the base and stabilized it well and he looks very professional. I just love him. He definitely makes the whole scarf.

Next up came the hat. I had seen a hat online that looked like a Pokeball and decided that would be my nephew's favorite. The inspiration hat has the button done with intarsia, which I could technically do on my machine, but I didn't know how yet and it would have taken me too long to learn and plot out and probably make this hat a few times to get right, so I decided to just knit the base colors into the hat and then figure out a way to add the circles after. Doesn't this beanie look so late 90s without the circles? How trendy am I? lol This is a picture of the mattress stitched back, which turned out great.

And here is the inside because I think it just looks to cool, lol. It came out very clean and I'm always shocked by how precision the knitting machine makes things look inside. 

Once the hat was made, I had to figure out how to add the button. I had thought of just crocheting one, but that would have been really bulky, as would knitting one. Then I thought about finding an embroidery file and making a patch of just the button, but that would have been hard in the size I needed it. Then it hit me that I could just use a white base fabric and embroider circles of different thicknesses in black. This didn't require any files to do - I just used circles on the machine - and I think it turned out fantastic. The base fabric is a white denim my mom had on hand. Because this was just fabric, it was much easier to sew on than the thicker patches. 

This was the final item I was hurrying to finish so I could pop it in the mail, so my finished hat photos were all taken late at night, thus the lighting in the photos. I think the hat turned out great. If I was to make it again, I would do about 2 rows less of the white, but other than that I am so happy with this one.

And I had to get a photo making the same face as Pikachu, lol. This set is definitely my favorite of the bunch and I was really proud of it. I think the design idea was good as well as the execution, which is just always a nice boost. My nephew loved it on Christmas, which is also the icing on the cake. He now has a custom made but professional looking accessory set for the chilly weather and I hope he loves it for a long time.

Summary:

Yarn: 1 skein of Red Heart Super Saver in Yellow - $ 0.25, 0.23 skeins in Black - $ 0.25

Pattern: None

Notions: Pikachu embroidery file - $ 3.00

Time: 4 hours