This hat is a free pattern in the most recent Knitty online magazine. I knit one of these right away for the mister – here’s that blog post.
I folded it in quarters for this picture.
The pattern is called Planetarium (that’s the Ravelry link – here’s the Knitty link) and it’s knit in two colors of a fingering yarn. These two are from my stash. I had a skein of a zingy purple Koigu KPPPM and some leftovers of Lichen and Lace sock in Citron. (I used it for my Stargazer Mittens.)
I made the same changes to the pattern as the last time. This one doesn’t feel like it’s going to pill, so that’s a good thing.
This hat is a free pattern in the most recent Knitty online magazine. I thought it was so pretty that it jumped right onto my needles!
I folded it in quarters for this picture.
The pattern is called Planetarium (that’s the Ravelry link – here’s the Knitty link) and it’s knit in two colors of a fingering yarn. I used KnitPicks Chroma for mine, because I had it in the stash. The colourways are Black and GoGo Boots, which is a gradient yarn. it’s a very clear pattern and an easy knit IMO.
I made a couple of changes to the pattern. I knit it exactly as written the first time, but the mister doesn’t like slouchy hats so much. My gauge was also a bit tight. Rather than changing needles, I knit a larger size (actually one repeat larger than the largest size) and I left out one of the three star bands to make the hat shorter. It fits more like a watchcap, which makes him happy.
As much as I like the colours, I think the yarn is going to pill – it’s a single ply, loosely spun. If I make a second one for myself, I’ll use a yarn with more of a twist, maybe Koigu KPPPM. Hmm. Time to check the stash!
I made the medium size and chose which colour to use as I went. It was a good pattern and a nice knit.
I like the colours of it but don’t love wearing the hat. (I hate hats, really.) It fits around but is the wrong height – not enough to slouch, so it just makes my head look bigger. (My head is bigger than this foam one.) Mr. Math will adopt it, I’m sure. He loves all the hats in Felted Tweed.
Meanwhile, I’m still knitting on the Rowan shawl/stole and have used half the wool in five repeats of the pattern. It’s about 30″ long now, so will be a good length when done. It’s a lovely knit, a bit too complicated to memorize the pattern, but the yarn is giving a nice definition to the stitches. I’ll show you that one when it’s done.
I spotted this free pattern last week – Fulay Little of LittleKnits shared it on Facebook – and since I have a bunch of Rowan Felted Tweed in my stash, I thought I’d give it a try. I’m always looking for the perfect hat. Most are too small for me, but this one has directions for three sizes.
Here’s the Olof hat pattern on Knitty. (BTW, I chose the option to print just essentials and it included all the pix, which isn’t the way that usually works.)
Here’s my first attempt:
I chose the Camel (the beige) to offer some contrast to the Bilberry (purple) and the Watery light teal), but the hat is too beige – even though that star band which is half done will have a green background. You’ll notice it’s off the needles, which is a portent of doom – or in this case, frogging. I’m going to switch some colours around.
On the upside, I enjoyed the corrugated ribbing, which was a new thing for me. The hat also fits well, though I might make another in the biggest size just to have one that’s a bit droopy. Rowan Felted Tweed really is wonderful for fair isle work. It’s such a nice soft yarn and I like how the stitches smush together a bit. (That’s a technical term. LOL) Here are several other projects I’ve knit in Rowan Felted Tweed:
Fair Isle Hat from Vogue KnittingBute by Lisa Richardson
Hmm. I’m looking at that grey hat on the left. It’s using two shades of Rowan Colourspun, plus three of Felted Tweed – those three were a subscribers’ gift from Rowan. The pattern was a scarf that I didn’t much want to knit and I’d forgotten all about it. It was the Garter Slip Stitch Scarf by Lisa Richardson. Here’s a Ravelry link with a project pic. They look quite good together, don’t they? I decided to frog right back to the purple ribbing and switch out the camel for the avocado.
I have a tendency to buy yarn because I like it, without a specific project in mind. (This inclination is worse if the yarn is on sale.) That means I guess on quantities and sometimes, I guess too low. That’s what happened with these skeins of Manos del Uruguay Wool Clasica—that’s a Ravelry link btw. Here’s a Fairmont Fibres link, which I think is the US distributor. I loved the colour (it’s #114 Bramble – this link shows the colourway on the FF site) and bought four, but four skeins of aran weight yarn isn’t very much. It’s just 604m and I wanted to make a garment from this.
I first made a vest from this yarn and had to even use the bits from the tags to finish casting off. Even so, the vest was too snug for me so (after some mourning), I frogged it and returned the yarn to the stash. And there it’s been for about a decade.
I rediscovered it recently and remembered how much I liked it. I searched on Ravelry for patterns specifying this very yarn and found Colonnade, a free pattern on Knitty by Stephen West. It might have been one of his earliest patterns—it was posted in 2009. Here’s the Ravelry link, and here’s the Knitty link. The pattern calls for three skeins of this yarn, and uses two different colours. I had four and wanted to use them all up. Hmm. Here’s a picture of the shawl laid flat from the Knitty website:
You can see that the shawl is in four quadrants. If you look a little closer, you’ll see that each quadrant has increases on just one side: the increases are at the front edges and on either side of the centre back. I looked through the project images on Ravelry and it seemed that many knitters found the neck a bit snug—they’d added stitches, but I decided to add an entire section. My fifth section is inset into that centre back seam to keep the shawl symmetrical—and to keep it symmetrical, this new section has increases on both sides. The idea was to make the shawl wider but not much deeper, and use up the four skeins.
The pattern has a four-row repeat for the lacy part: I considered those instructions to be for sections one, two, four and five, then did my addition in the middle. If you’re inclined to do this yourself, here’s the pattern stitch for that new section in the middle:
I cast on 52 (instead of 42) stitches and worked as instructed. I had 212 stitches when it was time to start the lace and 38 stitches between markers.
I did nine repeats of the lace pattern, then cast off. With a gentle block, here’s the result:
And a closer view:
I’m really pleased that it didn’t pool, but that’s probably because the number of stitches increases every second row. There’s just 23g of the Wool Clasica left over, so that’s one more gone from my stash.
Alive & Knitting 