A bit of a challenge

I don't often challenge myself with my knitting. As I knit mainly for pleasure, and don't find challenging myself particularly pleasurable, I tend to focus more on experimenting with colour and texture than on challenging or developing my technical knitting expertise. But I do like traditional colourwork - the motifs and patterns have a pleasing regularity and repetition and I like the subtle gradations of the colour combinations. So, knitting this small colourwork project - a hat - was a good balance of technical challenge and manageable outcome.



The pattern is Brooklyn Tweed's Seasons Hat in the summer colourway. The colours are not very summery by Australian standards; the blue is too grey and the browns too subtle to evoke the Australian landscape. But the colours are very pleasing, whatever the name of the combination. I bought a kit, containing the yarn and pattern to make this hat. The yarn is Loft, Jared Flood's (Brooklyn Tweed's) own yarn. It's a sticky fingerweight yarn that's perfect for colourwork and like its thicker yarn sibling, Shelter, the heathered blend of colours within the yarn is very pleasing. The only negative feature of the yarn is that it tends to break if treated too vigourously. I knitted the crown of the hat on double-pointed needles and had to be very careful that the little tug I give to avoid ladders when switching from one needle to another was not too harsh.

This is such a great pattern. As a self-taught and relatively novice colourwork knitter I found much of the advice within the pattern very useful. The information about background and dominant colours, and the advice about varying needle size between the patterned and plain sections of the hat were very useful. I will never be a skillful colourwork knitter as I simply cannot master ambidextrous knitting and have to put down and pick up the yarn each time I change colour. Very labour-intensive. But following this pattern produced a competent result.

This is the inside of my hat. I think I'm even prouder of the inside than the outside.



I wore my hat to work yesterday. Well, I actually wore it to and from work and was very pleased with it. I think it looks quite spiffy.