A New Hat

Autumn is here and I have a lot of 8ply oddballs in my stash. What else to do but make a new fair isle beanie?

I love bucket shaped beanies – they work so well on my bucket shaped head.  Geoff also has a bucketesque noggin so when I design a new beanie I get the prototype and Geoff gets the test-knit. All I do is change colours for the test-knit and my girly beanie becomes a man beanie. It probably wouldn’t work for a floral design or something with bunnies on it, but I generally do unisex patterns for fair isle.

I always knit two samples of a new hat before I publish a pattern. Primarily, it gives me two different colourways to photograph. I know a lot of people like to use the colours they see in a pattern rather than just wing it with their own colour choices – so two colourways gives the would-be knitter a second option.

The other reason I knit two samples is for pattern checking. The first sample is knitted from sketches and notes. Then I write out the pattern in full so it’s at the point where it just needs the photos added but is otherwise ready to publish. I knit the second sample from the “almost ready to publish pattern”. Regardless of how well I check the first pattern, I usually find something that needs correcting while I knit the second hat.

So I’m knitting up a hat for Geoff in black, red and grey. I love the green though and I’ll have to hide it from Raynor who shares my love of green.  I’m almost tempted to make one in lime green, black and the purple/violet/pink mix “Charming” colourway of Morris Quartet.

I’m teaching a class in designing your own fair isle hat at Morris and Sons next month. It runs over two Saturdays on April 21st and 28th from 12.30 – 3;30pm. Details are available here. It will be lots of fun so give Morris and Sons a call if you are interested. You don’t even have to have a bucket-shaped head.