hat

A vest into a hat

This hat was once a vest, a vest that was unravelled because I ran out of yarn knitting a sweater from an unravelled dress.

Knitting lends itself so well to making new things out of old things, if you can bear to rip out your own work. These particular ‘old’ things had been practically unworn, which helps (both with the ripping out itself and finding the courage to do it), although this yarn, Colourmart’s Extra Fine Merino, wears very well. I didn’t even notice it when I took the photo, but the sweater I was wearing that day is in the same yarn – knit only a few months after the dress and the vest – and it still looks new, even though it gets worn constantly.

The hat is a pretty straight-forward slouchy beanie, cast on with no real plan or pattern. The stitch creates a really nice subtle ribbed look even though it’s mostly stockinette, so I’m also considering this a big swatch, to be revisited, maybe.

Knitting Christmas

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Happy holidays! I’m not terribly big on Christmas so I surprised myself when I decided to knit this hat on a whim, and surprised myself again when it worked!

A while back my friend showed me a very cool sweater she had with a fascinating 3-dimensional stitch pattern that looked like dragon scales, and that’s the stitch that popped into my head when I started thinking about how I could knit a cartoony shaped tree. The yarn is some mystery green DK yarn that another friend gave me years and years ago (thanks friends!), held double for max effect, and speed. The star is the Stjärna pattern – adorable, easy and free.

I figured when the novelty of having it as a hat wore off, I could always use it as a tree so it’s been sitting on my fridge (where else) next to my ‘real’ tree (a tiny fake thing but it has balls and lights and all!), stuffed with a big skein of yarn to hold its shape, ready to be converted back into a hat to entertain any visitors 🙂 It kind of overshadows my other tree now, so I think next year it will get the lights, and maybe some tinsel and pom-pom decorations and become the official tree. After all, what’s more fitting than a knitted tree for a knitter?

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A new hat pattern, Dashes

The Dashes hat, my second pattern, was released last week! I’m so happy with this one, it’s fun but not too over the top. It’s a stranded colourwork hat and comes in 7 sizes, from Newborn to Adult L. The colourwork chart is really easy to memorise so it hits that sweet spot between easy but not too boring to knit.

I originally designed Dashes last year as a birthday gift to my friend. Creating new designs for specific people is always great fun and a good challenge as it helps me think outside my little box while still trying to keep my own touch. When it came to Dashes, I wanted to make something graphic but still bright in a way.

As for the Noisy hat, I made a little online colour picker for this hat too. In fact, I actually created the first prototype for this specific hat, and I threw it online really quickly when I got it to work and loaded it on my phone when I was at the yarn shop picking colours for the green brimmed sample. Sometimes colours can look great in the skeins next to each other and still not knit up as you’d hoped, so it can be helpful to be able to preview your colours ideas in the pattern.

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A new hat pattern: Noisy

Here is a simple little beanie I wrote a simple little pattern for. This is the first knitting pattern I’m putting out, so simple is good!

I’ve made lots of plain black ribbed beanies over the years, they’re nice and mindless to knit, so last winter when I wanted a quick instant gratification project, I figured I’d make one for myself but make a bit more interesting by adding a contrast yarn. I had a couple of skeins of off-white DK weight yarn left from a sweater so this seemed like a perfect use for it! Nothing like some black and white marling amirite.

When I remembered this would be a good little design to dip my toes in the pattern writing waters with, I also realised how easy it would be to add any colour to black to make it different, or knit with any two colours for all sorts of looks – bright, primary, natural, neutral, dark… I sometimes sketch out my designs and colour them in to test before committing to a yarn, but that can be tricky when the different colours are in the yarn itself. So I made a little tool to test out different colours before swatching, on a webpage.

Head over to the pattern page, where you can test the custom colour picker and find the pattern for free. It comes in 4 sizes, child through to adult large, and is worked in two strands of DK yarn held together.

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