That darned hat

The scarf-for-me was made with Noro Blossom which I purchased on clearance. I had two additional skeins which I decided to turn into a hat (which was, to be fair, what Ivy told me to do with the original ones instead of a scarf.)

When I went to the knitting store, the Very Smart Knitters there told me that of course the yarn would be able to hold ribbing. They told me of projects they’d created which used Noro Blossom and which were ribbed.

So I swatched it, cast on 72 stitches, distributed them on dpns, and started working on the ribbing.

I have no idea what I’m doing wrong because this stuff has no shape whatsoever. I’ve got about four rows knitted, and this hat is being unbelievably stubborn. Stitch definition? Hah. Ribbing? K2P2 looks exactly the same as anything else I could have done with it.

The yarn is fuzzy and “slubby” (someone else’s term) and I cannot reliably see the difference between the knits and the purls.

So here are our options:

1. The Very Smart Knitters lied to me in order to get me to buy dpns (highly unlikely, as they could have sold me better yarn for hats if they’d pushed, and I’d have needed dpns anyhow.)
2. There’s some kind of Magic Purl which would allow this yarn to hold its shape (highly unlikely, as someone would have mentioned it.)
3. Satan hates my hat project (very likely, but I don’t think he’s messing too much with the yarn, other than making stitches magically vanish and reappear on the needle. Seriously, I counted several times and the needle that should have had 16 stitches had only 15. I increased one stitch, and I had 17 stitches. What?)
4. I have defective Noro Blossom. (Possible, but not likely)
5. My needles are too big and the knits and purls are getting lost in loopy yarn goodness. (I’m not a good enough knitter to know this.)

At this point, I’m probably going to rip the whole thing back and start something else, but I’m curious: has anyone else used Noro Blossom and managed to make it hold a shape? Is my hat much-hated by Satan? Did the Very Smart Yarn Ladies lie to very naive me? Or is there something else totally obvious that I’m missing?

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Edited to update: someone else found the solution for me and blogged about the hat she made from Noro Blossom! The pattern is here, and the gauge and all is the same, so I’ll be ripping out the mess I made yesterday and starting over.