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!
