Fair Isle is contagious
... and I, who was content to happily knit Aran things with twisty cables, felt the urge to take up a Fair Isle project. I turned to a book on hats by Anna Zilboorg, which I like for two reasons - they're small, and they're weirdly shaped.
I learned that Anna's not so much into writing lengthy directions. It took me four tries, a spate of really undignified pouting and several running starts to figure out exactly where she meant for the various increases and decreases to go. At least the repeated frogging gave me a chance to get my tension right.
Blocking something like this presents an entirely different set of problems. The top of the hat is pentagonal and it's got that funky point on it which is not shaped anything like any ironing board I have. The very top is unblocked, which I need to fix, because it's also a little corrugated.
Anyway. I present to you a pentagonal hat from "45 Fun and Fanciful Hats to Knit" by Anna Zilboorg. The yarn includes two colors of Cascade 220, a little bit of Merino Style and some Wool of the Andes, dyed by me, using logwood purple, a natural dye extract.
I present it to you atop the Fool's head, because the hat suits his long face better than my face.
Comments
~Suz~
I love hats. But you are right about the difficulties they present when it comes time to block. I have blocked hats on baloons, on canisters, on saucepans...anything I can find.
When I have something with a point or odd little jiggle like yours, I will tightly wad up craft paper -- really wad it up tightly -- and put in in the point of the (wet) hat. Then I'll smoothly stretch the hat over the inappropriately used hosehold object.