This is a KAL http://www.shetlandwoolbrokers.co.uk/Fire-Festival-KAL

I’d taken the yarns to EYF along with my Fair Isle Kep pattern, but as soon as I saw Gudrun Johnston’s Wool Week beanie (launched at EYF) and how amazingly ‘flame like’ the design was, I immediately changed my mind and started knitting the beanie at the festival.

I’ve made some minor modifications you can see most easily in the lowest line of ‘flames’ - little blue dots in the lowest line of flames and similar further up the hat just to enhance the appearance of flames.

I’ve introduced a 3rd colour into a few of the rounds - easy if you measure out the length of wool needed and break that off so you can keep flicking the length out of the way rather than getting balls of yarn tangled.

Inspired by the photos on the blog post I wanted a more organic and shaded impression to reflect the nature of the flames. Not easy when confined to 8 colours, but this sort of challenge is something I relish. I did it by using different rounds of the 3 background colours, purple-black, dark grey & light grey, and mixing them up a bit as I transitioned to the lighter shade going up the beanie.

Having ‘specks’ of a different colour in some of the flames also helped with this effect.