Shoal Bay Slouch - Part 5, Almost finished

After popping the apple crisp in the oven and planning what to make for dinner (butternut squash curry), I sat back down and picked up where I left off (part 4).

A few rounds more and it became quite apparent to me that my decrease-marker-positioning math was wrong.

I finished my jogless join rounds

and still had 4 stitches between my end-of-round marker (yellow) and my decrease marker (blue).

My mistake was 4 x 2 for the decreases. Because, of course, when you knit 2 stitches together you don't end up with 0 stitches you end up with 1 stitch. It took me a minute to figure out the right calculations.

The correct position of my first decrease marker should have been at 8 stitches from the end-of-round marker. So ...
— 1st decrease round: k6, k2tog (7 st to left of end-of-round marker) - then k12, k2tog around - end k6, jogless join (now 6 st to left of end-of-round marker and 7 st to right of end-of-round marker)
— 2nd decrease round: k4, k2tog (5 st to left of end-of-round marker) - then k11, k2tog around - end k7, jogless join (now 4 st to left of end-of-round marker and 8 st to right of end-of-round marker)
— 3rd decrease round: k2, k2tog (3 st to left of end-of-round marker) - then k10, k2tog around - end k8, jogless join (now 2 st to left of end-of-round marker and 9 st to right of end-of-round marker)

— 4th decrease round: k2tog (1 st to left of end-of-round marker) - then k9, k2tog around - end k9, jogless join (now 0 st to left of end-of-round marker and 10 st to right of end-of-round marker)

If I had been clever, I could have "back-doored" my way to this:
— I'll have 4 decreases over the jogless join rounds
— At the end of these rounds, I'll be down to 10 stitches between each decrease marker
— My end-of-round marker will move 4 stitches to the left over these same rounds
— Therefore, I need to start with my end-of-round marker 4 stitches to the right of it's ending location
OR
— 10 - 4 = 6 stitches passed the last decrease marker
AND
— 14 - 6 = 8 stitches before the first decrease marker

I kept going and completed the third repeat of the pattern stitch. Then I switched to knitting all rounds. I did one more every-other-round decrease and then moved on to every-round decreases.

I FINALLY got to the point when my end-of-round marker was ready to join up with my decrease marker. I knit 5 ...

leaving 2 stitches before the decrease marker ...

slipped the next stitch

dropped off the end-of-round marker and slipped the stitch back ...

knit the two stitches together ...

and replaced the decrease marker with the end-of-round marker ...

(Can you tell that I was VERY happy to FINALLY reach this point?)

Just a few rounds later, I ran out of the first skein of my light color yarn. So this hat needs just a little more than 1 50-gm skein of the main color yarn.

I'm really liking how this hat is turning out. I've been trying it on as I go and decided to take a photo.

Then Bill sat me down and he took a real one ...

just before I called it a night. Finishing up will have to wait to another day.

P.S. The apple crisp was delicious, but I thought the butternut squash curry was less than fabulous.