Knitting Hats During The Pandemic

Throughout the pandemic, I've been more than a little all over the place, doing a bit of this and a bit of that. I've been great at starting various projects, but not so great about finishing any of them and, as I've mentioned before, I've really struggled with keeping my art habit going. Throughout all of this, the one constant source of sanity has been stranded color knitting.

One day, early in the pandemic, I decide that hat knitting was a good way to cultivate some happiness. The plan was to keep it simple. I was not knitting hats for any particular person, so I didn't have to worry about the size or pleasing anyone. Instead, I was just going to knit one hat after another with no regard to how long it took me to finish one. Rather than getting caught up on selecting colors, at first, I started out matching yarn colors to different fabric pieces found in a quilt that a dear friend made for me. It helps that I have an almost endless inventory of my favorite yarn in almost all of the different colors it came in over the years. Sadly, it's been discontinued. While the mix of 50% wool, 25% alpaca and 25% mohair is glorious, there certainly are other good options in worsted weight yarn. For the few colors that I am running low on, I've decided to use 'em up and I'll find a substitute at some future date, if needed. 

I decided that I had the time to experiment more with adding embroidery and I also decided to use motifs in several hats where the yarn floats would be very, very long as an inducement to tackle and relearn the invisible stranding technique that I learned several years ago from Susan Rainey. Finally, I decided that I would knit at least one style of each hat in Kristin Nicholas' patterns for Moroccan Fedoras and Wild and Wooly Headgear. 

Actually, Kristin's influence was behind much of this project, since it was her patterns, her instructions about adding embroidery to knitwear, her discontinued yarn, and finally many motifs from her book, Color By Kristin.

Since I don't like to post pictures of people on this blog, getting a good picture of a hat can be a bit difficult. This morning, I nominated the wooden man on the front porch to be my model. Many moons ago (so many ago that it was before we met), my spouse performed as a juggler and included some other circus and vaudeville skills in his act. The wooden man was his assistant for part of his act. 

The takeaway from trying to set up a simple photo shoot is that I like taking natural pictures better. Trying to set up decent pictures is hard! I wish I would have started earlier in the day, so I had more options in the yard, where much of the greenery is not looking so good, and the decent parts were getting too washed out by the direct sunlight. 

With the help of a fairly cooperative model who didn't move, except for blowing over once in the wind, and needing a lot of adjustment to get the arms to stay up, I got some decent pictures. 

Individually, here are the hats.

I gave away this one before I took a picture. The "price" of the hat was sending me several photos. Like I said earlier, I'm not knitting these for any particular person. For this one, I knit the medium size, but my gauge was a tad tighter. I had to think of someone with the smallest head amongst all of my friends (not the smallest brain, by the way) and I gave it to her. This is a good hat to wear around the house if you are cold. It does not cover the ears. 

MF - close fitting hat

The pillbox hat is probably my favorite shape , so I've done two of them so far. If you want to see the side of the second one, it's in the second group shot above. It's the one to the left. 

MF - pillbox hat 1 - sideview

MF - pillbox hat 1 - top view

MF - pillbox hat 2 - top view

This is another one which turned out on the small side. 

WWHG - easy 4-pointed hat

I used a different quilt for the color inspiration for this one. 

WWHG - flat hat

I brought over the hat collection to a socially-distance event with my hubby's family and told my niece I would make her a hat. I figured she would want to try on the samples and we could figure out which shape she wanted. I had just finished this hat and she decided that she wanted it.

WWHG - stocking hat
 

This bottom "panel" of this one is two layers, so it's a bit more knitting than most of the others. My hubby likes this feature in a hat, so this is the only one that I've made with the intended recipient in mind.

WWHG - spiral decrease hat

For most of the hats, I've been adding embroidery and it really adds a lot. The hats are fine without it, but the embroidery is like the icing on the cake. You don't have to be perfect with your stitches, in fact I think it looks better when there's a little bit of wonkiness to them. Pillbox hat 1 is actually the first hat that I knit and the circles which were knitted in the hat became so much more interesting with the embroidery.  I did not take a close up of that example, but here are several others. 

I'm not done with the project. I still need to knit a Peruvian 4-cornered hat and a mushroom hat. If anyone is keeping track, there also is a beret in one of the patterns. I completed one of those, but gave it to a friend this weekend and I didn't want to be pushy about getting pictures in time for this post. 

I really like the beret, but decided to not block it as a beret. The hat has a nice shape without blocking it into a beret. More importantly, it's like a not-so-close fitting hat, which also covers one's ears. When you live in a cold climate, I think this makes it a better hat.   

Some of these have found homes so far. Some have not. I'm giving them away slowly over time and deriving a lot of enjoyment from that, as well.