Shetland Wool Week 2019 Our Hats

They are both finished! 

As usual I managed to alter the main body of the pattern so they would fit the 24 stitch punchcard on my elderly knitting machine. 

Michael wanted a striking hat and this is what we came up with. 

There were a couple of samples, the main change for the initial knitting was to tweak the waves at the sheep/ boat transition, we decided big waves was in order after last year. 

I always use Shetland yarn and the same number of stitches for his head so was puzzled when the hat was clearly too big. I washed it and shrunk it down a bit but that was not going to feel either comfortable or stay on his head in the inevitable high winds. So, after knitting I took out a 12 stitch block and would seam  the hat after knitting the rib. The fit was much better.

I love the crown pattern and from looking at many finished hats knew we wanted the crown pattern to stand out well, so this is the final version. Following decreases to get to 7 ‘points’ worth I knitted the crown by hand, using dpns,  once the hat body and rib was constructed. I changed to smaller ones on the way up to tighten the middle slightly. 

The other design feature  he requested was a turn up brim, so I knitted this in plain 2x2rib downwards on the knitting machine before joining the hat body  together and did a lime green edge as I was concerned he would cover the contrasting ‘grass’ in the sheep’s field. 

I should be able to spot him in a crowd! 

Janet’s hat 

I always have to make the hats smaller for my head, so took out a whole pattern repeat of 24 stitches. I couldn’t start my hat until I had finally decided on my 2019 Wool week jumper design and colour combinations as I like the hat to co-ordinate with the jumper / cardigan I make. (More about this later....it is finished but I was too close to the wire this year. However as a bonus I have the plan for next year’s knitwear in my head and planning on starting during the winter) 

I decided to make a slightly different shaped hat this year as I wanted to ‘showcase’ this crown pattern. 

All except for the  natural and grey, the colours are naturally dyed with ground elder, from the cardigan I knitted for wool week 2 years ago. 

I knitted the main body using the knitting machine, then did the back seam. I changed to a contrast yarn and did the decrease row, then a couple of purl rows (thank you very much Ina for the idea) and then knitted the crown, which I really love and think the colours have worked well. 

All that was left was the rib and as I have got into the habit of doing I used all the colours I had used in the hat and used  K1 P1 rib to pull the hat tighter....not wanting to loose it in a gale. 

So this is the finished hat.....

You’ll need to try and spot us to see them on our heads. 

Thank you to Oliver (and also Sandra and Ella) for this  pattern and to others who have posted about their hats. It is so lovely to see them all.