More crossed stitches

 I have been working on crossed stitches for a while now - there were little swatches, some approaches did not work, some sort of worked. So, I stared doing bigger swatches to see if the approaches might work with a lot more practice.

This last week the swatches were hats. And, I woke up this morning feeling like I had been doing contests with Bruce Lee on who could do the most pushups on fingertips. I knew the feeling - my tools were wrong.

I had been using 7" pointed 2.25 mm steel needles.  I went back to the tool chest, and dug out the Shetland Making Pins I bought a long time ago and had not used for years and years. Fourteen inches of stiff, polished, pointed, steel; 3/32" in diameter.  They went into a knitting sheath that hangs below my belt.

An Edison moment; the right tools for knitting a hat from 2-ply woolen yarn with crossed stitches. 

The take away- - Old School Tools work for Old School Knitting.  I think this is the reason that crossed stitches have been less popular since Victorian knitters tried to do away with traditional knitting tools.