Sunday, July 31, 2016

Building Houses

Each year there is an official hat pattern designed for Shetland Wool Week. Last year it was the enormously popular Baa-ble Hat by the event's patron, Donna Smith.

This year's patron is Ella Gordon and her official design is The Crofthoose Hat.  I've already made one in earth tones in Jamieson & Smith Shetland 2-ply Jumper Weight wool. You'll see the charming croft houses dot the Shetland landscape.  

I enjoyed making it and decided to make another and the colors I'm using are quite different. This time I'm using wool from the other Shetland company, Jamieson's, using their Shetland Spindrift. These two companies are not the same, the similarity of names is a coincidence. The wonderful thing is that these fingering-weight balls of wool are interchangeable and they give knitters a huge range of colors.


Now that all of my crofthooses are built, I can move on to the crown of the hat.  By the way, Ella has also made a pattern for a yoke sweater with this design.  She is a talented lady, and very lucky to work at Jamieson & Smith.  Can you imagine being around all that fabulous wool on a daily basis? I'm going to a talk given by Ella in September.  Should be fun!

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