Sunday, January 26, 2014

Seasons Hat

Unfortunately, I'm not a cool hipster who can pull off a big floppy hat. Still, I do love fair isle knitting!


This is the Seasons Hat pattern by Jared Floor of Brooklyn Tweed...  I only had two skeins of his yarns appropriate for this hat, and I'd been itching to try using some of the Brooklyn Tween yarns for awhile - but with fair isle work such as this, you need more colors!  After looking around at other projects done with this pattern on Ravelry, I was happy to find someone had used Alice Starmore's Hybridean 2-ply.  I have more colors in this yarn, and still hadn't found a use for the tiny 25g skeins. This was a perfect opportunity to try two different yarns I'd never used before, to knit something for myself, to knit something fast, and to get back into some fair isle work - all in the same project.  YAY!

As you can see from the picture above, the hat looks tall on me.  Brett says the hat has a bit of a mushroom look to it.  Yup, that's a good description.  Thing is, we both really like the look - I mean, check out this fair isle work!


By the time I was done, Brett was saying I could knit one for him, but we both agree that I need to get rid of the "mushroom effect" (or, as the pattern calls it, Slouchy).  Even though I knit the second of the four size options (Adult S Beanie, Adult M Beanie, Adult S Slouchy, Adult M/L Slouchy), it's just a bit too tall for our preferences.  But then again, Brett never says "you could knit one of those for me!"

Sooooo...I think I would remove 4-7 rows of the knit work just after finishing the color work (there's 7 rows of plain stockinette stitch after the colorwork and before the crown reduction).  And then I'd go with an even smaller needle size for the crown.

Oh yeah, that's another cool thing about this pattern.  Previously, when I've knit stranded/fair isle work, I've had issues with my colorwork gauge being more snug than the plain color areas (remember the hourglass shaped hat from my fair isle workshop!)  Well this pattern has you use three different needle sizes - recommending US1 for the ribbing, US2 for the plain stockinette work, and US4 for the colorwork.  I don't have US2, but figured my US2.5 would be really darn close.  I'm starting to think maybe US1 would do for the top of the head - that should cut down on the larger, floppier area....

This hat also had a 1x1 tubular cast on for the very beginning (the tan color around the base of the hat) - I liked how this turned out - nice and smooth compared to the usual more textured long tail cast on.  Will have to use in this in the future!

I didn't love the colors I used for this as I was doing it, but I didn't have the biggest selection in appropriate yarns - Brooklyn Tweed's Almanac is the blue, which I really like, and I do like the Sprindrift (light), Bogbean (green), Dulse (greenish tan) and Fulmar (medium tan) colors - I guess I'm just not loving the combination of the funky tan-green Dulse with the more true-green Bogbean maybe? Brett wants a hat in more vibrant red, whereas I want one in a charcoal black/gray (like Brooklyn Tweed's Cast Iron colorway).  Yeah, I see some more hats in our near future.  ;-)

4 comments:

anne marie in philly said...

NICE colorwork; no holes, even sts.

looking handsome there; can't wait to see brett model his new hat!

Jeph said...

Don't hold your breath on this happening in the immediate future. ;-)

FinnyKnits said...

That is some fineFINE fair isle work, sir!

I miss knitting. I should do that some more.

Though...not so much with pulling off the hipster look myself. Maybe I need some new fancy leg warmers.

Jeph said...

Seriously, you need to get back to the knitting. I mean, the username/blog title sort of say something, right? ;-)

Confession: There's more yarn arriving today - in colors Brett should want for his hat, and colors I'd really like for a hat for myself. And then both will be knit on smaller needles - down one size in some parts of the hat, down two sizes for other parts. No hipster hats!