Diadem

When I pulled my first skein of completed, non-practice/learning yarn off the niddy-noddy I thought two contradictory things at once: this yarn is the single greatest yarn to have ever been made, this yarn doth teach the torches to burn bright, this yarn can simply walk into Mordor; AND objectively, this is the ugliest damn yarn I have ever seen in my life. It was slubby, thick-thin, possessing pretty random color changes... It was a yarn only a mother could love, and I was it's mother. So, it was going to be knit into something lovely if it was the last thing I did, and it wasn't going to be some “rustic" looking plain stockinette or ribbed something or other, as seems the standard for beginner's handspun patterns (beginning spinners are, after all, rarely beginning knitters).

I got to swatching. I knew I wanted something with a diamond pattern because, nerd that I am, the navy-bronze color of my yarn reminded me of Ravenclaw from Harry Potter. I also knew I wanted a hat (Hats ar