This is Huxter. Designed by Gudrun Johnston and available to buy on Ravelry or as a digital pattern in the Pittenweem shop.
I'm a huge fan of Gudrun's stranded colourwork hats. We have several in the shop. She offers a range of hat styles, and interesting motifs and her colour combos are excellent.
Huxter has a great combo of jaggy zig zags, circles and squares.
Stranded colourwork is when you're working with more than one colour on each row/round. (although it's often just two colours). You'll work with one colour and the unused colour is held at the back until you need it. When you do need it you carry the yarn across the back - creating strands.
When you do stranded colourwork you generally want a yarn that's at least a little bit toothy and sticky. It's more likely to stick to itself and give you a nice smooth pattern effect. The stitches will nestle against each other rather than gaping.
Huxter uses 4 colours of Jamieson's of Shetland Spindrift 4ply - Shaela (MC), Flame (CC1), Pebble (CC2) and Burnt Ochre (CC3). I used the same colours for our shop sample.
You only need a small amount of the 3 contrast shades (about 30m/8g, so check your Spindrift stash) but you do need nearly a whole ball for the background colour.
Some of the colour combo ideas for Kellister (another Gudrun hat) would work too.
The Huxter is knitted in the round so you only need to work knit stitches for the colourwork. I used a 40cm circular needle for the brim and body of the hat. When I started decreasing for the crown of the hat I had too few stitches to go round my circular needle so I switched to Double Pointed Needles (DPNs). You can of course knit the whole hat on DPNs. Or use a long circular needle (100cm) and the magic look technique to knit the crown or the whole hat.
The colourwork pattern is charted. Each square on the chart represents a stitch on your needles. It's helpful to note your colours beside the chart so you don't get mixed up. This is doubly important if the colour used in the chart looks similar to the colours of the yarn you are using but you've allocated the colours differently.
I think Huxter is a beginners stranded colourwork project.
- The motif is only a 6 stitch repeat so it's easy to keep track and get into a rhythm.
- It's a large A4 tall colour chart so it's clear to read.
- It's a simple rib at the brim - no corrugated ribbing or turn backs
However, there's a few things to stretch your skills:
- Gudrun recommends casting on by alternating two methods - one stitch by Long Tail Cast On and another stitch German Twisted Cast On. This gives a stretchy edge whilst mimicking the K1 P1 rib. You could just cast on using one method - as long as it's stretchy!
- You are stranding across the crown decreases. It's important not to pull your floats too tight but also keep the decreases neat and not loose! But its only a little bit of stranding.
When attempting stranded colourwork for the first time it's best to focus on the basics -
The most important one is get the tension of your strands/floats right.
When you knit stitches from the left needle to the right needle they can get bunched up on the right hand needle. If you strand across the back of these bunched up stitches you will get puckering on the front of your work. Usually that puckering cannot be fixed.
Don't spread and stretch your stitches out either as this will give loose strands and unstable stitches.
You want your stitches to sit neatly and evenly spaced like they would naturally.
So be aware of how your stitches are sitting on your right hand needle BEFORE stranding across the back.
Secondly think about colour dominance and keep the positions of the background colour and contrast colours consistent.
Colour dominance in stranded colourwork is determined by where you hold one yarn in relation to the other and you can make one of your colours 'pop' more than the other. You can do this whether you knit your stranded colourwork with two hands or one. You can read more about colour dominance at Ysolda.
I knit my stranded colourwork holding one yarn in my right hand and the other in my left. I throw the right hand yarn (how I normally knit) and pick the yarn in my left hand (continental style). It takes a bit of practice but it stops your yarn getting tangled and I find it helps me maintain a consistent yarn dominance and keeps my yarn strands tidy. You can see a demo here.
The yarn in my Right hand will Recede and the yarn in my Left with Leap. So by holding the contrast colours in my left hand they will look sharper against the background.
The yarn in my left hand is always coming from the bottom so you can achieve this effect even if you knit with both yarns in one hand.
Don't worry if this goes astray in your first attempts, it won't make your hat look bad!
Need some help with techniques?
I used this tutorial for German Twisted cast on (or Old Norwegian) by Andrea Mowry.
For some top tips and tutorials on knitting stranded colourwork, check out these links.
- How to Knit Fair-Isle Patterns by Tin Can Knits
- Knitting Colourwork with Two Hands by Andrea Rangel
- Favourite Fair-Isle Techniques by Very Pink Knits on YouTube
- Stranded Colourwork in Magic Loop by Andrea Mowry on YouTube
To recap:
You can buy Huxter on Ravelry or as a digital pattern in the Pittenweem shop.
You can see our range of Jameison's of Shetland Spindrift yarns here.
You'll need 1 ball each of 4 colours.
