The instant gratification of hats...

 

The instant gratification of hats...

This week all my design knitting time has been spent on hats, hats based on and therefore to match some of y previously released shawl designs. I have done this before as it's my favourite way to use up leftovers from the shawls that I have made.

I love to use leftovers in a practical useful manner, so they tend to all go into boxes, labeled with the various yarn weights I tend to use (I'm not much of a lace weight knitter! 😂) and the intent is to use them as small quantities to make up colourwork sweaters for myself...that rarely tends to become a reality soon after being put in the boxes...So they more often than not, pop into my mind screaming to become a new design instead, and because they are a leftover from a design that means for me, a complimentary piece.

This spark of inspiration is then followed practically instantly by working out how to take the main elements of the shawl design in question and try to break those elements down into a small scaled down combination of those elements, so seeing how I want to place the colours, perhaps needing to modify a chart to be worked in the round instead of flat as with the shawls, and from a different direction and so on

Then we have cast on, and without the matter of increases to think about that comes with shaping a shawl and the pure size of a growing shawl as you add more and more stitches, it's a great feeling of ease and instant gratification as the hat forms, pretty quickly compared to when I am working on a larger piece, and for me that's the best thing about casting  on a hat, and as much as I love the journey of larger pieces, sometimes we could all do with that feeling of "Not long cast it on...and now I'm binding it off!"
So more new designs leaving the needles to update you on today rather than testers items, as we are in the strange middle stage of the last part of older tests and too early to have much to show on newer tests, but they'll all add up for some lovely finished objects to come!

Design in Progress...

So now onto the hats themselves. Yesterday the first one left my needles and is currently waiting for a soak/block to be readied for photographs, so I can get the pattern out to my wonderful team of test knitters, but I'm going to share some unblocked pics with you here, and as you may have done already from the opening pic, if you are familiar with my designs I'm sure you'll be able to identify it's parent shawl straight away!

It was an utter joy to pick this beautiful yarn up again,  such gorgeous speckles of colour and deep tonality on her Deluxe 85% wool/15% nylon base,  perfectly dyed by Caz, the dyeing talent behind Gardener's Cottage Yarn. These leftovers were from a kit of which I had used as part of our collaboration together towards the end of last year for the release of the 'Braided Lace Shawl'. The kits for the shawl are no longer available but I really do recommend clicking on the link to visit the Etsy Store to see what other Gardener's Cottage Yarn beauties are available!

The hat is made with the same braid cables of alternating lengths which unravel into small lace sections as the shawl,  tracing the height of the hat. The Crown decreases incorporate the full length cables into the construction and the brim is reminiscent of the 1x1 twisted rib stitches that were part of the shawl's lace border. I love twisted rib, so the finished look of that is always an eye pleaser for me! 

Now that that hat has passed the hands on from me stage of it's development, I have now turned my attention to the next one in the planning queue...

This small early beginnings of a brim will become the 'Ancient Spirals hat', the offshoot of the 'Ancient Spirals Shawl' released last year. 

These were leftovers that also couldn't be left laying around. In just my kind of colours, these little bundles calling out for use are on The Wool Barn's
 Cashmere Sock base, this irresistibly soft luxuriously plump yarn is definitely one of my favourite yarns ever, so I had to answer their call. I am not very far into this design at the moment, but I have it all planned, charted and ready to be brought to life, so should have it done by the end of the week, ready for pics to be shared on next weeks blog post!

Tests in Progress...

There haven't been too many more finished hats and cowls to come from our Gift of Honey Hat & Cowl sets recently, so I think I'll save them for next time.
Also Our Squish Factor Cowl is underway so there might be some finished cowls from that design to share with you next week , and who knows hopefully the Braided Lace Hat will be off with the testers too by that point!

Until next time! …