Patterns for Your Knitting Adventures
I had three partial skeins of Malabrigo (or similar handspun) yarns just begging to be hats- but none of the skeins were quite enough to knit a full hat.
I alternated the 3 colors every 2 rounds to keep the yarns from pooling or varying in thickness too much between stripes. The yarns all appear to be merino, and the hat is quite soft (though not very stretchy, but it wasn’t meant to be).
A simple knit/purl ribbed hat knit in Zephyr- I found a partial cone of at the thrift store, enough to make a couple hats out of!
I alternated the rectangles as I went along to keep the knitting interesting- even in a wool/silk blend, black yarn isn’t terribly amusing to knit with (well, unless you are somewhere dark- then you have the added excitement of not being to see your yarn well!).
The pattern draws in slightly, which helps give the beanie some stretch- the yarn itself doesn’t have that much stretch due to the weight and percentage of silk.
I didn’t have enough of either yarn to knit a hat by themselves, so I combined a lovely skein of recycled cashmere yarn in a bright teal with a skein of silk tweed yarn to knit a striped hat. The resulting hat is fabulous- not too bright, not too tweedy, one of my fave “plain” hats to date. The subtle variation in the shades on teal in the cashmere yarn perfectly complement the silk.
Since neither yarn has much in the way of stretch, I added some ribbing to help the hat stay on. I did random stripes to make the knitting more interesting, and a quick decrease at the top to stretch the yarn as much as possible.
Gray Hipster Garter Stitch Hat
I held a solidly boring gray yarn along with some funky bamboo/cotton yellow and pink yarn I thrifted (it came with some other yarn I wanted). The gray really helped tone down the hat, and along with the garter stitch, broke up the pooling colors.
Next time I will try a 1×1 rib with the garter stitch to see how that looks. As it is, I like the way the garter stitch scrunches up and makes the hat slouchy. Garter stitch hats are definitely hats meant for when you have plenty of yarn- something I really didn’t have- I had only a few yards of the yellow/pink yarn left!
The seam created by knitting garter stitch in the round- not too noticeable on this hat, but does require you to plan accordingly for most garments to avoid an obvious seam.
Knit in BFL (bluefaced leicester- a type of sheep) thick and thin handspun yarn from Yarnarchy- a yarn biz from Concrete, WA. The name of the yarn is “Down the Rabbit Hole”. I got the yarn while I was at Urban Craft Uprising in Seattle, where there were several booths with yarn.
The yarn is thick and thin handspun, somewhat fuzzy, and very soft. Since the skein only measured 100 yards, I knew I would be cutting it a bit close on yardage for a hat. I originally started wrist warmers in the yarn (2 at a time, so I wouldn’t have to worry about yardage), but the way the stripes were working out in combination with the thick/thin texture wasn’t quite working for me. I switched to knitting a top down hat. I prefer to knit my hats from the bottom up- easier on the hands for the top part of the hat- but I wanted to be sure I could judge when I was about to run out of yarn. When I knit bottom up hats I can usually just use a 16 inch circular needle. When I knit from the top down I need to do magic loop on a longer needle or use double points until the hat is long enough for it to be comfortable to knit on the 16 inch circ.
I started with 5 stitches and slowly increased to 10 to form a pointed top, then doubled stitches every round (working 2-3 rounds in between increase rounds) to 20, 40, and finally, 80 stitches.
To make the hat more interesting to knit, I worked purl bump (p2, k6) around every few rounds, varying where I started the purl bumps so they moved around the hat.
Garter stitch to prevent curling. But first- preventing flaring- I decreased 4 stitches around, then alternated purl and knit rounds to create ridges, ending on a purl round. By this point, I was holding my breath as I bound off- I had only several yards left. Once I finished the bind off I found I had maybe 2 yards left, enough when combined with a bit of the Shelter yarn I had leftover from another project to make a jaunty pom pom for the top!
Knit in leftover yarn I made a simple cabled cardigan with, I knew I wanted to knit a simple beanie with this yarn to show off the beautifully crisp stitch definition this wool yarn has.
I believe this is Shepard’s Wool from Stonehedge, though I got it several years ago as “seconds” (had a few more knots than it would otherwise have), so it wasn’t labelled by the time I got around to working with it.
2×2 ribbing for the hem, just enough to keep the hat in place. Then around and around until a quick decrease for the top. This yarn is so lovely to work with that I barely got bored knitting in st st for the entire body.
