FO: Elphaba Beret

Wednesday night marked a significant event in my life.  As a long time theater fan, raised on the soundtracks of opera and musicals, it was always disheartening to have to say I had never seen Wicked.  I owned and loved the book, I thought the music was splendid, but I had not actually seen it on stage.  So for Christmas my roommate, a certified Wicked fanatic, bought tickets for us to see the national tour when it came to our area.  Wednesday night we finally got to use our tickets and sat in the front row for one of the most magnificent productions I have ever seen.  I would rave on and on about the dialogue and the staging and how I may or may not have cried during Defying Gravity, but you can read all of that on any high school girl's facebook page provided you can decipher all of the emoticons and glitter.

As a thank you for buying my ticket I decided to make Andrea a hat to go with the shawl I made for her last year.  The only problem was that the shawl was in lace weight and Knit Picks does not make that particular color in any other yarn.  Thanks to a Ravelry de-stash I was able to score two skeins and decided to knit with two strands held together.  All that was left was to pick a pattern, which took a while but I finally settled on Springtime in Philadelphia, as I had always liked the pattern and it used a light fingering weight.

Elphaba Beret in Knit Picks Shadow, Midnight Heather

I only used about half of each skein.  The entire hat is knit on size US 2, 2.75mm needles as I do not own US 0s.  To make up for that I decreased the stitch count when I got to the ribbing and knit it all through the back loop to make it a little tighter.  The color is really hard to photograph, but I love it.  It hints at all the colors in Elphaba's black dress.

Our Glinda was played by Tiffany Haas, and we were honored enough to be at Anna Eilinsfeld's debut performance as Elphaba.  It was a really fun night and I'm glad that even though Andrea's seen it now five times she will still let me drag her to lotto for tickets this weekend before the tour leaves town.  Maybe I can talk her into wearing the hat again.

For more FO's visit Tami's Amis