Kat that got the cream

Last Autumn I bought some Rowan Pure Wool DK in a delicious mossy green colour (Shade 022 Emerald) on a rare trip out of Cornwall to a city with a John Lewis department store. I got a bit giddy with all the possibilities of yarns and colours and in the end bought just two balls of the Rowan yarn thinking I would quickly find a lovely pattern to use it for. But I just couldn’t find the right one until Ellen brought a fantastic pattern book to Knit Club a few weeks ago and I saw my dream hat.

The pattern is Kat by Kim Hargreaves from her Precious collection – a really classy set of patterns, beautifully styled and photographed. I could quite happily make every single thing in the collection and a browse around her website has just turned up numerous other books that’ll definitely be on my Christmas list.

The pattern was well written and easy to follow. As is usually the case with hats like this it looked all lumpy and bumpy before blocking and didn’t sit right on my head at all.

But after blocking it overnight over a dinner plate using the old faithful method I found last year, it looks fabulous.

The only bad thing is that I think it might’ve been me finishing the hat that brought an end to all the sunny weather we were having. I wasn’t wishing for it to be Autumn so I could wear it, I promise!

S’no hat for snow

When I started making the Snowdrop Beret by Swallows Return for my brother’s girlfriend, Kitty, for Christmas, I didn’t really take notice of the fact it said it was a hat for spring (because of the lace pattern letting the breeze through!). When do we ever get really cold winters in the UK? I just thought it was a really pretty pattern.

Unfortunately, it’s been the coldest winter for 30 years and much of the country’s been covered in snow for quite a few weeks. Kitty discovered just how cold the wind was as it whipped through her hat on the beach in Norfolk on New Year’s Day. Sorry Kitty!

Still the pattern is pretty and, even though it took me a while, it did help me get to grips with lace. The only modification I made was using a weightier wool – Sirar Click Chunky in Indy. I chose this because I wanted the beret to be a bit floppier, but it made the pattern slightly less visible, so I think I would stick to dk weight if I made it again.

The pics below show the difference between the bumpy, lumpy hat pre-blocking.

And the smoother, flatter hat being blocked on a dinner plate.

To block, I just dampened the beret slightly (rather than washing it or soaking it) and followed Susie F Handmade’s blocking technique to protect the ribbing from stretching.

Hat’s the way I like it

It’s often the way with knitting that if anyone sees what you’re up to, they pipe up and ask you to make something for them too. This was the case when Woody, my housemate at the time, saw me feverishly trying to get Ruthie’s mittens ready before her birthday. I was foolish enough to agree. Woody liked the pattern of the mittens, but they’re not really the thing for the fashionable man about town, so I made him the hat instead. Although the pattern is for knitting the hat flat, I did it in the round and was much happier when I reached the end and there were no silly seams to sew up. No pic of Woody modelling the finished hat (yet), just me. I really enjoyed making this and I reckon I might get round to doing one for myself one day.

The only modifications I made to the pattern were starting with 12 rows of rib instead of 8 and I swapped the colours around a bit, so that I got more of colour A than colour C (I wanted it to be mostly grey).

The link to the pattern is in the my first mittens post.

A Hat of One’s Own

I am two weeks away from the hand-in date for my MA in Professional Writing. I am meant to be writing a novel, but I have also spent quite a few hours in the last week making this lovely vintage hat. Well, I say vintage, it’s 1970s which I would prefer not to think of as that long ago, but I suppose over 35 years makes it vintage! Anyway, it’s the first hat I’ve knitted for myself and I love it. At least I’m doing something productive with my procrastination time!

I used 2 x 50g balls of Click Chunky in shade 0128: tarn which gives an equivalent tension to the discontinued Patons Husky wool that this pattern was designed for. It was surprisingly quick to knit up and it’s going to keep my ears lovely and warm in winter. Just remember that when you make the bobble, you slip the stitch you’ve been creating the bobble with off with the last purl stitch. I forgot to do this and ended up mucking up the whole pattern and having to start again!
Click here for the pattern. Enjoy!

Lovely red hat

The hat I knitted for my brother was made to a very strict set of specifications. It was to be an exact replica of a white simple ribbed hat he found at my Grandma’s house a few years ago. She had knitted it over 20 years ago and was quite bemused why David would want such a tatty old hat. Anyway, after having worn it almost every day for a good few years, he wanted a dark version of it. So I found a pattern online that was similar – HJS Studio Simple Knit Hat – worked out how to do it exactly like the white one and knitted it in navy blue. It ticked all the boxes.

However, when it came to knitting a hat for my chap Martin, I wanted to make it a bit more interesting to knit, so I found a variation on the rib stitch – the cross stitch rib. It’s made up in exactly the same way as the pattern linked to above, but instead of just using rib stitch all the way through, after about 10 rows of rib, swap to cross stitch rib as follows:

1. (right side) p1, *Tw2R, p1, repeat from * to end of row
2. k1, * p2, k1, repeat from * to end of row

Tw2R = knit into front of 2nd stitch, don’t slip off, come back round and knit into first stitch then slip both off together.