Posted on November 11, 2013
I’m 11 days into my Hatbox Foundation knit along, and I’ve been shamelessly indulging my addiction to Faire Isle stranded color work. I have a huge batch of left over bits and pieces of baby yarn — most of it Baby Ull washable merino — and I’ve been using it up by knitting hats inspired by Fair Isle knitting.
I’m still tinkering with my hat design. I’ve knitted a couple that just had a band of color work hearts like this one:
And then I got very ambitious and decided to design a child’s had that had the stranded work from bottom to top. I think this one came out very nice, but it’s a bit smaller than the parameters that the Hatbox Foundation has listed for the circumference of a child’s hat, although it would fit a toddler. So the next one is going to be a little bit bigger, and I’m going to tinker with the design for the crown. So stay tuned, because it will take about a week to knit the hat.
The hat above was knitted on #3 needles out of Baby Ull scraps. What I love about the Baby Ull is that, unlike traditional Shetland wool that you’d use in Fair Isle knitting, the Baby Ull colors are not heather. They are bright and vibrant and that creates a very colorful and fun hat.
Once I get a pattern that I’m happy with, I may post it here and on ravelry.com. In the meantime I have lots of Baby Ull leftovers — enough to carry me through to the end of the knit-along, and probably into December. Looks like people may be getting Fair Isle hats as Christmas presents this year.
If you want to learn more about how to do two color knitting, here’s a great tutorial on the method I use. One point, though, when you’re knitting a hat in the round, you don’t ever have to do the stranded color work on the wrong (purl) side, so it’s super easy because it’s all done with knit stitches. The trick to doing two color stranded work, is to learn how to knit using both the continental and the English style of knitting. Although the hats are made from many colors, each row of knitting uses only two. You just swap out the colors from row to row. The down side, is that when you’re finished you have a lot of yarn ends to weave in, which is a pain. But the results are always so spectacular.
If you would like to contribute a hat to the Hatbox Foundation, please visit this blog post with all the details on the November Charity knit along.
