Third and Final Hat For a Bit-

Can’t believe Friday is here- I got home from a wonderful weekend visiting family – then scurried around tying things up at work- and today we head off – Up North camping!  Wanted to be sure to post about the third and final hat in my  personal mini Fair Isle Hat Challenge before I head out.

I spent a little more time on this hat because I was really interested in doing a little something different with the crown.

I picked out quite a few little bits of yarn. The colors are blues, greens, dark green/brown and little hits of black.I had labels for….Charcoal, Earth, Grouse, Cosmos, Moorgrass, Yell Sound , Sky, and  Woodgreen. These colors remind me so much of the landscape where we camp- I know I was daydreaming of our upcoming trip as I pulled the colors together...

I try to be organized about keeping track of colors, but it gets tricky – Often I get carried away and start knitting and forget to lable a band...

I cast on 136 stitches using a size 2 needle. This time I used a cable cast on and this turned out to be the method that gave me the result I liked best.  I did a 1by1 rib here and that also proved to be my favorite of all three hats. I needed to adjust the increase to 176  stitches because of the pattern I chose which is # 142 from the “200 Fair Isle Motifs” book.

To play with the crown pattern I pulled out an old issue of Threads magazine- Dec. Jan. 88-89. I decided to do a 7 point star and  adjusted the space between the star shapes and added in a tree motif  from Mary Jane’s new book ‘150 Scandinavian Motifs”.

Because the crown starts with 168 stitches this hat has a crown with a wider diameter than the Feitelson hat. On this hat I used the Slip 1, K2together, Pass the slipped stitch over- decrease. This makes a little raised ridge, which I found I liked – but I think I may like the look of the Hat#2 decrease better.

I did find that I needed to reknit the crown because I wasn’t really happy with my initial transition between the body and crown.Thankfully I had slipped a "lifeline" in before I started the crown so it was relatively pain-free to rip back.

I am so  happy that I took the time to reknit-  can truly say this one ended up being my favorite- probably my favorite hat ever- and I’ve knit a lot of hats!