Knitters who attended our yarn tasting a few weeks ago heard me talk about my ill-fated idea for a hat–It was going to be really cute, shaped like a beehive with little needle felted bees adorning it. And it was ill-fated because when I pitched the idea to Alison, thinking that it would make a great KP design, she very politely informed me that the pattern already exists–only in one of the most popular knitting books of the last decade. Knitting designer FAIL!
There are 2 kinds of pattern ideas that I get–some of them are patterns that I think will be fun to write, but probably wouldn’t choose to knit for myself (I have 10 years of stash at my current knitting rate so I need to be a little choosy to avoid getting buried in yarn!) and some are ones that I really, really want to make for myself. The beehive hat fell into the latter category, so I decided that pattern or not, I was going to make a beehive hat of my very own. So I dug up some remnants of Swish DK in Grain Heather and cast on for a simple hat with welts of knit and purl to create the beehive shape. I found a free pattern for a welted cap, Wurm . “Wurm” means “warm” in German, which you probably could have guessed but I, genius that I am (see:designing popular hats that everyone has already made) had to ask my German-speaking partner for a translation (I still believe I am a genius, though)
I took a lot of liberties with this pattern–knitter’s prerogative! I changed the turned brim to one-by-one ribbing, and decided that I wanted larger purl welts and smaller knit ones on the right side, so adjusted those as well. Now, like many knitters, I knit a lot faster than I purl, but I had re-conceived the pattern to have way more purl stitches than knit ones. So I decided the knit the hat inside out!
Here is what it looks like as I’m knitting:
And here is what the inside (outside-to-be!) looks like:
I’m about halfway through. Nights here in the NW get cool even in the middle of summer, so I won’t have to wait till next winter to wear this one! DO you keep wee projects like this on the needles to break up the monotony of larger projects? Do you get these wild hair project ideas that you just can’t resist casting on? Share your experiences, please!
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