Votic Hat

Today sees the publication of my latest design, the Votic Hat. I have been very fortunate in having a preview of the lovely new yarn from Blacker Yarns, Cornish Garden, launched on 20th September 2019 as their 14th birthday yarn.

This is a beautiful soft woolly yarn in a gorgeous range of colours, and I have been delighted to provide a pattern knit in this yarn.

Slouchy broken striped hat seen in side view

The design is based on a fragment of knitted material found during an archaeological dig in Estonia. The fragment dates from the 13th century and is believed to be from the cuff of a mitten. I have taken part of the motif shown in the fragment and created an unusual broken striped hat, which knits up perfectly in the 3ply/light fingering weight of Cornish Garden.

Thank you to Sue Blacker for giving me the opportunity to design with this lovely yarn.

The Votic hat pattern can be found in the Payhip Granary Knits Pattern Store.

Chicken Knitting Ebook

Of all animals, I think I have always like birds the best, probably influenced by my Mother, who kept Zebra Finches, Canaries, and Lovebirds, and avidly watched the wild birds in her garden. She even had a Silkie cockerel, rescued from a school egg-hatching program and given the run of the house and garden for many years. It was not until 2007 that I kept any birds of my own, and I started with hens. I liked the idea of fresh eggs for breakfast, but the day we acquired Hetty, Betty, and Letty, was the day I lost my heart to them. As soon as I held one in my arms, I was smitten, and the longer I have kept them, and the better I understand them, the more I see their individual characters, their behavioural traits, their likes and dislikes, their amazing colouring, the variation of comb and wattle shapes, their unique song.

When I started designing knitted textiles, my flock of hens (and one cockerel) featured very prominently in my inspiration. This first collection of patterns is a result of that inspiration, and covers the stranded colourwork designs based upon feather shapes and colours.

The patterns in the ebook collection are:

Feather Cap Beanie
Fingerless Feather Mittens
Full Feather Mittens
Feather Cowl

Each pattern is available individually at the Payhip Granary Knits Pattern Store.

Feather Cap Beanie Pattern Released!

The Feather Cap Beanie pattern is now available from the Granary Knits Pattern store.

Feather Cap is a stranded knit hat, using ten colours of Jamieson’s of Shetland wonderful pure wool Spindrift yarn. The motif itself and the colours I have chosen reflect the feather patterns and colours of my lovely Cream Legbar chickens: Freddie, Sorrel, Sage, and Lavender. From a distance they look a like a dull brown, but close up, their feathers are a beautiful brown/grey, with touches of cream and pink. The four background colours and six foreground colours reflect this lovely effect.

composite

compositehat

The pattern gives three sizes; teen/small adult, adult, and large adult. In addition to the subdued palette I also provide suggestions for a more brightly coloured palette and for a monochrome colourway in shades of grey.

There are matching mittens (full mitten and fingerless) and a matching cowl, also now available.

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/feather-cap-beanie