Posted on November 18, 2013
I’m still knitting Faire Isle this week, using Baby Ull fingering yarn for my hat creations. I’ve been using the wonderful book 200 Faire Isle Motifs to design the the color patterns. I just love this book, which my husband gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago, because it gives you the pattens based on how many stitches and rows are repeated.
The book makes the math of figuring out a pattern across a set number of stitches that much easier. The pattern block for the hat below is based on multiples of 4. The small designs elements have just a four stitch repeat in them. The medium sized snow flake has an 8 stitch repeat pattern. And the crown starts out with 32 stitches in it.
This week’s creation also has a wide band at the bottom, so it fits more like a floppy hat than a stocking cap, which is kind of cool, but an unintentional design element. I didn’t use small enough needles for the band at the bottom. So I’m refining the hat pattern, and you’ll see the result in next week’s blog.
In the meantime I’m running out of baby Ull colors, and I’m having to stop myself from running out to the store to buy more. The object of this exercise was to use up the left-overs. But I’m getting so many compliments on the hats from family members that I’m starting to think I need to make hats for everyone as Christmas presents, in addition to sending the ones made in November that I’m sending off to the Hat Box Foundation. So far I’ve been good about staying away from the yarn shop. But I have this feeling my left-over Baby Ull is going to run out before I get to the end of November.
Just a remind
er: Here are the details of the knit-along. I’m collecting hats for the Hat Box Foundation, which donates hand-knit and hand-crocheted hats to cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. If you are knitting hats this month for this charity, please take a moment to make a post below about your progress and projects. You can even post pictures of projects in progress.
Also, this is the big release week for Last Chance Knit & Stitch, a novel that prominently features a yarn shop in the story, along with some rather quirky charity knitters known as the Purly Girls. The Purly Girls in the book end up knitting hats for cancer patients, too. So if you love romance and knitting, you might want to pick up a copy this week.
