I made this hat for my sister for Christmas. I had found this little corduroy squirrel iron-on in a funky shop in Northampton and decided I must knit something for sis that I could iron it on to.Once upon a time, when my sister was in college, she had green hair. She also carried on conversations with the squirrels on campus. Her friends started calling her Green Squirrel. She's a little nuts, I know, but I love her anyway. I love her enough to design a hat around an iron-on patch. It was going to be a plain green hat with the squirrel on the front, but I love this tree cable and it seemed to be the right thing to put on a squirrel hat.
I've finally gotten around to knitting another one and writing up the pattern which I have named in honor of my baby sister and her crazy hair dying, rodent whispering ways.
The pattern is available as a free download on Ravelry, or you can email me and I'll send you a copy.
The original hat was done in some Classic Elite Skye Tweed that was kicking around in my stash. Since that yarn has been discontinued, when I went to write up the pattern I turned to my favorite yarn - Berroco Ultra Alpaca.
The tree cable is adapted from Barbara Walker's Third Treasury of Knitting Patterns - a book I adore. If you are a knitter and don't own all 4 books in this series, go out and buy them now.
The intertwining trees sit on a reverse stockinette stitch background. (And don't you dare moan at me about all that purling - it's not a big deal, I promise.) The cable instructions are both charted and written out depending on which way you prefer to work.
The final version is about 17 1/2" around by 7" deep. Stitches could be taken out of or added into the reverse stockinette section to make it bigger or smaller around. But you'll have to finagle a bit with the crown decreases. (Do let me know if you figure out a good way to do this....)
To shorten the hat, skip some rows in the trunk section of the trees (rows 1-8 of the chart).
Thanks to my coworker Tara for modeling for me. You're a star! And I owe you lunch.
What a beautiful hat! I love it. :)
ReplyDeleteI love it, too! And I'm very happy to know the background of the Green Squirrel nickname.
ReplyDeleteI'm remembering some knitted pillows Gramma once made for her couch...they weren't really all that satisfactory, because they were always kind of stretchy and misshapen, but wouldn't the tree cable look cool on a pillow? I think I must make one for camp!
This is Amy, by the way--I just realized I have a new Google identity when I post here now...I guess that's because I'm very slowly inching toward creating a blog of my own, although there's nothing there yet...
A great pattern! I love it. Thank you for sharing with us.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the pattern - I made one for my brother as a Christmas present and he is very pleased with it. Beautifully charted and laid out. I'm doing a lot of hats at the moment, so I think I will download your "Walden Tam" pattern via Ravelry.
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year! Helaina