Colorwork Hat
A hat in Technicolor
So there’s knitting, purling, ribbing, stockinette, obviously cable (but I feel too faint-of-heart to try that), and plain ol garter stitch. And those let you create so many interesting patterns and shapes. But there’s another axis to explore: color. Now, obviously you can make any project colorful by picking a yarn that changes color throughout or something like tweed with little flecks of color in it. But to make a pattern you need to use color strategically. Think Fair Isle and the Norwegian Setesdal patterns. Instead of detailed stitch work, these rely on colorwork to create designs.
As my first project to flex my newborn knitting skills was a hat, I figured a hat should be the way to first explore colorwork too. Also in the same spirit, I attempted to find the least complex colorwork pattern that I liked, something that would make use of the yarn I had on hand. I landed on this pattern from Yarnspirations that had a Fair Isle-esque pattern using three colors (a base color and two secondary colors).
A typical knit pattern without colorwork will usually have instructions for each segment of the piece. So here, it instructed to do 1x1 ribbing for the cuff and then the rest of the hat would be knit in the round to make stockinette. But now there’s a second set of instructions for the colorwork, called a color chart. And it is literally a table outlining the colors used for each stitch, row-by-row.
Color chart for “Favorite Knit Fair Isle Hat,” showing the three designs used in the main section of the hat.
Now one thing that really puzzled me before using different yarns in the same project is how to switch between them; more specifically, what happens to the yarn that isn’t being used? This is where another term comes in: floats. Essentially, the yarn that isn’t being used is just spanned across the back of the other color’s stitches when picked back up, which creates little parallel lines across the back of the piece- since they’re not knitted into the work you need to be careful not to pull the yarn too tight when picking it back up or the tension will be off.
Image courtesy of TheYarnSite, showing the “right side” on the left and the “wrong side” on the right, which is the inside of the piece and where you can see the floats.
Now I read a few guides on how to manage these floats and learned there’s ways to incorporate the floats into the piece so there’s not as much loose yarn on the inside but I figured for this work, I’d just leave them like they appear in the above image. There’s also a lot of discussion on how to hold the yarn since you’re working from several strands at once - the majority seem to hold the two colors in different hands, basically doing English and Continental style knitting at the same time, but that also seemed to much for me to learn so I literally just dropped the strands that weren’t needed so I only ever held one strand at a time. Inefficient, probably. But speed is not my goal. The floats probably also ended up looser than necessary but not so loose that they make the hat bulky.
I’m pretty happy with the finished hat, but I had my sights set on another pattern.
First attempt at colorwork. You may notice I 1) screwed up the checkerboard pattern in the middle and 2) took the liberty to make the snowflake motif more colorful at the top…my opinion is that I probably should’ve just stuck with the one color.
Project Info:
Pattern: Caron Graphic Knit Fair Isle Hat via Yarnspirations
Yarn: Classic Cotton Yarn by Loops and Threads, 100% cotton, medium weight
- [base color] burgundy
- [contrasting colors] peacock, seafoam, and key lime
Needles: US 9 circular and DPNs
Misc: attention
When searching for an accessible colorwork hat pattern for my first try, I found this design, which I immediately fell in love with. It feels like a fun modern twist on the traditional Fair Isle patterns and lets me play with a bunch of different colors (part of why I didn’t pick it first was the fact I didn’t have enough complimentary colors to work with).
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Hat design and colorwork chart.
Looking at the chart, it’s a bit more complicated than the first design, so I’ll definitely need to pay attention to where I am in the pattern and which yarn is which since I’m not using the exact yarns from the pattern. I also opted to use just 3 contrasting colors instead of the 4 used in the pattern, because I plan to use the background color in place of the lighter yellow color.
The plan is to finish the Sophie Hood first and then start on this - thankfully Minnesota winters are long so starting a hat in mid February will still let me get some good use out of it.
Update 2/27
And it’s done. Like the first colorwork hat, the knitting aspect of this wasn’t very difficult, just a brim of 1x1 ribbing and knitting the rest of the way. Even the colorwork wasn’t very difficult to manage, since each row used at most 2 colors at a time. The finished design looks busy but going row by row ends up being a very simple pattern to manage.
Perhaps my only regret is the choice of yarn itself: cotton. Add this to the long list of lessons learned, but hats should really only be made out of acrylic or wool, textiles that have natural elasticity. Cotton has essentially none (think vintage denim jeans with 0 stretch), and it makes for a hat that 1) fits very snug because there is no give and 2) will probably become misshapen after many wears since the yarn won’t “bounce back” after being stretched out (like jeans that get looser with each wear but then tighten back up after a wash). Also, cotton isn’t as ‘comfy’ feeling as soft acrylics and wools, so this hat has more of a washcloth texture. Even so, I’m really happy with how the color changes and pattern worked out. The technical aspect of the hat turned out well, I just know now not to use cotton for things that need give.
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Right hand image: reworked color chart using yarn colors from above. Middle & left images: Finished hat. I opted for a folded brim so the hat has a slightly different fit/shape than the original pattern.