…here we go again, with the blues!

I’m such a fan of Emily’s designs, having discovered her inspiring Insta feed - her wild swimming is just phenomenal to follow () and beautifully captured, alongside her wonderful knitwear, of course. And, I loved knitting her Eathie shawl - which was knitted with another insta discovery, Oslo Micro Dyery. Instagram is really a wonderful source of information and discovery.

Anyhow, I’ve a bunch of her designs in my queue, but this particular hat design really caught my eye and with the weather still identifiably winter, as opposed to the promise of Spring, I had to cast on at my earliest opportunity…

…which was as soon as I recovered from proper-actual-no-kidding-flu. Three weeks later and I’m almost ‘self’ again. I shall NEVER describe a bad-cold as flu-like again, having experienced the full wrath of ‘proper flu’ - two rounds of flu symptoms, followed by bronchitus. Not nice. But I’m BACK (well, sort of…)

Anyhow, onto pattern…

What an interesting design: a combination of knit, purl and slip stitches; alongside alternating stripes (two colours). The pattern is pleasantly straightforward to follow and easy to do, but really effective in terms of aesthetics - and I haven’t seen a design like it. Also, rapidly knitted up, I did this in a day! Yo!

Gauge: I knit tight. I assumed I’d loosen up with more knitting experience, but my tension hasn’t really altered. My Mum knits much the same - must be an hereditary trait. Will be interesting to see how my daughter knits, tension-wise (she is 5 and about ready to start learning to knit, which she’s eager to do - yay!). Anyhow, as usual, I’ve had to go up a couple of needle sizes to attain gauge. I’m working with a 4mm (brim) and 4.5mm (body).

Wool: I do love Isle Yarns, having knitted this beautiful Spring Tee using their fingering weight, last Spring. It’s such a light wool (even at DK/Worsted spun) and the colourways are naturally-inspired. You can buy both 100g skeins and 50g ‘balls’ and I’ve opted for 2 x 50g = which I think should be more than enough for this hat.

I’m working with ‘Far Swyre’ again - a very delicate grey-blue shade and a deeper blue (’Cliff’). Though I’ve reversed the suggested (dark) MC and (light) CC - which is surprisingly confusing when working from a coloured chart! I’ve had to mark the dark squares as “light grey” and the light squares as “Dark Blue” just to prevent any mishaps.

Mods: I’ve knitted TWO repeats of the mosaic chart as the hat was already measuring generous. Along with another repeat of rows 1-10, my hat measures 7” at this stage. I tend to like my hats to measure (from brim to crown) around 8-9” max.

I’ve added a pompom to complete this hat - it doesn’t obstruct or distract from the lovely mosaic pattern, I think. And, works so well with the relaxed ‘beanie’ shape.