Bizoo Bizu Tickle

I finished another project! (I'm trying positive reinforcement, hoping it leads to the speedy completion of other projects.) The tickle hat, from Louisa Harding's Bizoo Bizu book I raved about in an earlier post. According to the Ravelry group page, the name from the book is the children's phonetic pronounciation of "bisous bisous" (kiss kiss, maybe it's spelled "bizou bizou," I don't know French so I can't say for sure). How cool is it that Louisa Harding replies to people's questions on Ravelry?

This hat was wonderful to knit, but hard to photograph. A beret demands a human head. Thank goodness I had this teddy bear to use as a model... I tried stuffing the hat with balls of yarn, but it didn't look right at all. (more photos here) I used Louisa Harding's Kashmir Baby yarn, which I like because it looks good and doesn't pill easily.

I've started my next project, Blossom, from the same book, and decided to use Bubblegum, a great coral pink/red color of Kashmir Baby. I've knit two gauge swatches, neither of which were correct (AAAHHH my nemesis) but I finally found the right needles (I hope) and should have that rolling along tomorrow. All of this gauging has me thinking about switching to the combined knitting method (Annie Modesitt's explanation), because I'm not 100% happy with my tension and knitting when I'm not knitting in the round. My knit stitches aren't the same size as my purl stitches, and the combined method is supposed to help with that. I'll try it for my next gauge swatch, to see how it goes.