Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Fair Isle Hat

Today's sunset.

I call this Joey's hat.  I don't even know when or how the idea started, but I my son came up with a fair isle design for me to use for a basic hat.  I'm using Plymouth Encore yarn because wool ends up itching too much.  But the acrylic blend yarn would stretch out with the traditional hat design, starting with some ribbing, changing to stockinette stitch and then decreasing to the top.  The hat also just was not that warm. 

 After months on the back burner I decided to try a hat with a hem.  It solves the problem of the stretch and warmth!  However, knitting a hem creates a challenge for me the pattern writer, do I try to describe the process as if my reader has never knit a hem before or do I take it for granted that the knitter has done a hem.  Of course there is more than one way to do a hem. 

I will probably make it difficult for myself and assume the knitter has not done a hem and walk them through the process.  Being a knitting instructor, I tend to think of my patterns as instructional.  I hope this is one of the reasons people like my patterns.  You don't have to be an advanced knitter to knit most of my designs and you may just learn something along the way. 

Completely different colors give a very different look.

It took too much work for the average knitter to try to make the beginning and the end of the round look smooth.  I did a lot of duplicate stitching with the ends as I was weaving them in.  I think I will have to make the stripes 2 rows instead of 1, sorry Joe!

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