Knitted autumn hat

28th September

I maybe in planning mode for the big 'C', shhh, I know it's only September so I thought I better live in the moment and make something autumnal as well.  Although, I think I'm doing ok so far on that front, see  quick autumn gift wrapping and bring autumn colours indoors and for English country side autumnal views see outdoor Oxfordshire


One of the things I hoped to accomplish this year was to knit more and sporadically I have achieved this.  To spur me on in the latter half of this year, I have just bought myself a gift... new needles from Knit Pro and I love them!!!  I have been using their dpn all year but have now branched out to their circular needles, so it was with this in mind, I began to knit.

I decided to make a quick autumn hat with wool from my stash.  Found a lovely orangey red  100% wool from Drops called Eskimo tucked away at the back of the cupboard and used 6mm needles.  Casting on 50 stitches, I set to with no pattern.

Using wool that I had, I'm trying not to buy any more,
I began knitting

I wanted a quick make as really I had not planned for this and so decided to just knit on the circular needles, with such thick wool and large needles I was whizzing along like an old pro, easy to fool yourself, right?  After a few rows I decided it would be fun to try to add some leaves in and almost make the hat pumpkin like.  I set to quickly with my mini white board and white board pens and began to work out how to incorporate some leaves into the pattern.  I love to see how other people plan their designs, so thought I would show you my scruffy planning.  Why a white board, easy to rub out the mistakes as if they were never there!

Planning the leaf design and the distances
between the three leaves

It really was a quick hat to knit, around two hours.  It almost made itself, almost.  I actually had three small balls of green that I used so that each leaf had its own yarn, this meant I was not carrying the yarn round the whole hat.  It worked well mostly, but the yarn threads did tangle up a tad and twice I needed to stop to untangle, but I thought it worth it.

Growing quickly

Excuse the no make up look,
am full of a heavy cold today

I had not planned when to begin decreasing but waited to see how it sat on my head as I wanted a tight snug fit.  Half way through the leaf design after the nine green leaf stiches I began to decrease one stitch between each leaf for 3 rows and then decreased by 2 stiches between leaves for the remainder of the rows.  Once I was left with only six stitches I cast off, leaving long green tails.  With the green tails I pulled out my crochet hook and chained 10 and then slip stitched into each chain until I was back at the hat.  I then fastened off to create a stem on the top of the hat, a little I hope like a pumpkin stalk.

We are experiencing beautiful
autumn days at the moment

Do you know how difficult it is to photograph
yourself wearing a hat?  It almost took longer
than the knitting itself!!!

I feel that should the weather turn and let's face it, it could any day now,

that I am ready and will be seasonal myself to boot! 

 

♥  Have a great week wherever you are  ♥