Knititude

Truro Hat

Now available on both Ravelry and Loveknitting: the Truro Hat pattern! Like the Wellfleet Hat, it uses an innovative new cable from Norah Gaughan's Knitted Cable Sourcebook, AND it looks great from the "wrong" side (see the 3rd and 4th photos), making it effectively reversible. Instead of a pompom, I decided to add a fun tassel to the crown of this hat. 

The yarn I used, Cascade Yarns Boliviana Bulky, is a Super Bulky weight yarn, with label gauge of 2 to 2 1/2 stitches per inch in stockinette stitch, and recommended needle sizes are US 13 (9 mm) to US 17 (12 mm)! So if you are looking for something you can work up in an evening or two, the Truro Hat would be a great choice. You cast on only 68 stitches for the adult size, so I had to find a relatively small cable stitch pattern. Even though it's a smaller repeat than the cable I used in the Wellfleet Hat, it's a bit tricker to work, because you have to move the cable needle from front to back (or vice versa) in the middle of working the cable cross. 

The circular needle length I recommend for hats is 20 inches (50 cm), which I've recently realized is quite hard to find (thank you Paradise Fibers for carrying them!). Most knitting stores jump from 16-inch to 24-inch-long needles, but 24 inches is really too long to do most hats, and I find the needles on the 16-inch-long ones awkward to use because they're so short.

As a bonus I've included detailed instructions on how to do a felted join (otherwise known as "spit-splicing"). If you are using a non-superwash wool or other animal-origin yarn, this is a great way to invisibly join new balls of yarn, and decrease the number of ends you have to weave in when you're done.

I really love the way the three-dimensionality of a simple cable is enhanced in such a thick yarn. The "right" side of the fabric reminds me of snow-covered tree branches.

 

The towns of Truro* and North Truro are right next to Wellfleet, on Cape Cod; if you visit, be sure to see the Highland Light. It's the oldest lighthouse on Cape Cod, is still in active use, and was moved 450 feet west in 1996 to keep it beach erosion from causing it to fall into the ocean! (Photo below: John Burk)

*I was informed by a knitter who saw this pattern on Ravelry that there is also a Truro in Nova Scotia (and she lives there).

Wellfleet Hat

The Wellfleet Hat pattern is now available, both on Ravelry and on Loveknitting! I also call it the Wellfleet Reversible Hat, because the "wrong" side (below) is almost as nice as the "right" side (above)-- in fact, some may prefer it. 

This design is one of a pair* that I decided to work up almost the moment I opened Norah Gaughan's new Knitted Cable Sourcebook. Norah is a master cable knitter and creator, and this book contains so many new, unusual and wonderful cables...luckily, I also decided that I wanted to design a couple of hats that work up quickly in bulky (3-3.75 stitches per inch) or super bulky (1.75-2.75 stitches per inch) yarn. This helped me limit my cable choices to a few of the more small and simple ones-- cables that would fit on a hat if worked in a heavy yarn.

The cable I chose for this hat is simple enough that I didn't even include a chart in the pattern! And I love charts for how they give a visual representation of knitted fabric, simplify directions for complex stitch patterns, and allow the knitter to see the progression of pattern rows...but in this case a chart just wasn't needed. The cable looks more complex than it really is, a function of the ingenious and elegant cable cross, which crosses one four-stitch group of K1, p2, k1 over another. 

And this cable cross is the reason that the "wrong" side (above) looks so good. 

I did add my own innovation in the form of the crown decreases (above), which are worked similar to a three-needle bind-off (without actually binding off any stitches), and preserve the cable architecture into the final rounds of the hat. 

The yarn I chose is a new line from Cascade Yarns, Baby Llama Chunky; it's available in undyed and dyed colors, and is very soft compared to most wools. It knits up at the same gauge as their Baby Alpaca Chunky (which came out awhile ago, is also very soft, AND happens to be on sale on one or two websites at the moment).

As for the name Wellfleet, the rippling cables and gray-lavender-blue of the yarn reminded me of a wintry sea, so I decided to give a shoutout to my home, Cape Cod. Wellfleet is one of the more remote towns on the Outer Cape-- lovely in summer, it's a very different (but still lovely) place in the winter (photo below copyright Dapixara.com). 

*Next week: the second of the pair, the Truro Hat