Category: Knitting

Red pointed hats

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My social media bubble has been full of red pointy hats for the last few weeks. Other people claim they’ve seen nothing about them.

Thousands of years ago, slaves were given a red hat when they were freed. Versions of the Phrygian hat, pileus or liberty cap have been worn during various times since then. In 1979 I found an engraving from the 1790s which I used to illustrate an A level needlework essay. The people caricatured were wearing red hats and a thin red ribbon around their necks.

The same characters who were offended by pink hats with cat ears a few years ago are complaining about red pointy hats now. Apparently the hats shouldn’t be red. Allegedly they’re just a protest uniform and they’re not enough practical effort. Money raised from knitting pattern sales has been donated to families affected by immigration raids.

End of year

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A fabric tree with a linocut card and two knitted geese

I printed a midwinter card but didn’t send many copies out into the world. Here it is with an appliqué tree from a few decades ago. The knitted geese are made of aran yarn, too thick but the thinner yarns weren’t available in the colours I wanted at the time.

Water drop coaster

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Knitted cotton square
The wrong side of the knitting
Blue drop on white background
The horizontal view

There was a crochet pattern in a recent Water Aid magazine that arrived in the post. The picture looked like a white christmas tree. I wondered if the water drop would work as a knitted illusion. If I’d used the right size needles it might have looked better.

Multitasking

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Knitting on five needles lying on a watercolour cloud

There are many tasks to do today but I knitted instead. The project will become too big for three needles so I’ve added more. They’re slightly bent from being stuck under a heavy item for too long. They still function well.

Decreasing

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Slip two knitwise, insert left needle into the front and knit them together.
Hat pattern decreases

Sometimes people ask how I made the pattern on the crown of the hat. It’s made (accidentally) by decreasing the number of stitches. Most written patterns say K2tog, knit two stitches together. That gives the hat the ridges as the circle becomes smaller towards the top of the head.

There are other methods. SKPO (slip one stitch onto the right hand needle, knit one then pass the slipped stitch over the knitted one) gives a ridge leaning the opposite way to k2tog. In theory, slipping two stitches knitwise then knitting them together as in the photo above will give a tidier result.

Hidden Circles

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Knitted yellow circles in red squares
Red and yellow stripes
All an illusion

Knitted stripes, or ridges of two rows each. Using dark and light yarns and knit or purl stitches, an illusion of a circle in a square. This is the easiest pattern in an article about illusory knitting, but I like it anyway.

Front and back views

Cameras never lie, mine won’t show the red and yellow stripes in the way they’re visible to me.

Knitting in the round

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Inside view of a knitted tube

Knitting a spiral in the round seemed a good idea when it first appeared. I forget that it’s possible to knit in both directions while knitting a tube, so it might work. Using yarn from both ends of the grey, with the rainbow stuff in the middle. Nice reminder of how the ink looked on a zinc lithography plate before printing.