and the last of the christmas knitting… a beret for my mother.

wool makes her itch, so this one is alpaca, and as long as i can remember she has not worn hats on her forehead.  enter the beret-ish shape.  the perfect hat shape for my mama.

i’m going to write up the pattern for this one.  now that i’m done with the last yarn show of the season, you may actually see some of these patterns come to fruition.  that, or the baby will crawl and i’ll get nothing done.  we’ll see.

just three more simple hats. one for my brother.

one for a brother-in-law. i get bored with the tops of boy hats, so i try to do something different every time. this one got interesting ;)

and for my dad. this one is made out of my hand dyed lamb’s pride bulky.

luckily it’s still cold in montana and alaska so these are still useful… unlike if they lived here. geesh 80 degrees!!

elizabeth zimmermann pattern from the opinionated knitter.  every year i challenge myself to make an even warmer hat for jeremiah.  he’s a great person to knit for.  he wears whatever i make him and currently has a hat for most temperatures in fairbanks.  but 40 below, that’s a hard one.

so here’s an attempt.  side one – colorwork.  the orange is autumn house farms 50% wool/50% alpaca, dark blue is my hand dyed lamb’s pride, and lighter blue is snapdragon worsted.

side two – stripes.  same blues as above and some commercial wool (maybe cascade 220?).

ben claims that this hat is super duper warm and, when you think about it, it should be.  bulky yarns are warm because they only need to be loosely spun to be yarn and that leaves a lot of room for air in the yarn.  this hat is warm because it’s a double layered hat with space in between the layers for air.  i wonder if this style of hat would be warmer than a bulky hat?  also, it has a bit of alpaca and mohair in it, so that helps.  raveled here.

p.s. here’s this month’s newsletter!