Cheery Cherry Hat and More at Michigan’s Fiber Festival
Although the temperatures are at record highs near me, I am offering you some woolly hat patterns in order to defy the weather. And because it will take me plenty of time to make a stranded hat before it gets cold.
Here you see two charming designs by Joan Sheridan. The top one is her Great Lakes Hat which she designed for the Michigan Fiber Festival in Allegan which did not actually occur because of the pandemic. Notice that the light on the lighthouse has a tiny yellow bead so it twinkles. Then below you see her Cheery Cherry Hat which she designed for this year’s Fiber Festival.
I got to take Sheridan’s stranded knitting workshop this past week and managed to create this swatch. There are two sets of waves because I realized that I had forgotten to change to larger needles at the purled row which marks the hemline. Oops. So I made a second set in the correct needle size to make sure I had actually hit gauge, i.e. was creating the correct number of stitches per inch. (When you go off gauge you create something tiny or something humongous and then need to search the land for someone who will fit into it. Like Prince Charming but without a shoe or Cinderella).
I enjoyed watching the little waves take shape so much and now am slightly giddy. I want to make little knitted motifs on everything! This hat is sized for adults, but I can see why kids’ clothing is so tempting to make. You can cover a child in lady bugs, or Scottie dogs, or ducks... the mind boggles at the possibilities.. and all in tiny sizes which means it takes far less time.
Sheridan’s designs are for sale on Ravelry which you can access through a simple and free registration process. It an extraordinarily useful community of makers as people offer their technical notes on patterns while and after making a garment and thereby help you to make choices and solve problems. Go here for more: https://www.ravelry.com/
Sheridan also sells kits online which saves you the trouble of rounding up the proper color and amount of yarn, and then you needn’t buy a whole skein when you need just a wee bit, like the tiny bit of yellow for that lighthouse light. You can find the kits here: https://heritagespinning.com/register/#!/Kits-and-Yarn-Packs/c/39983857
For more on Fiber Festival and next year’s dates go here: https://www.michiganfiberfestival.info/