45 Fine & Fanciful Hats to Knit

One of my long term "New Year's Resolutions" has been to do some two color stranded knitting. Although I've bought several books on the subject, I mostly just found myself pulling them out every now and again to admire them. While lovely, I just didn't want to start on a big project. This weekend, something drew me back into my library looking for two-color patterns that could be accomplished in a reasonable period of time. And that drew me to Anna Zilboorg's 45 Fine & Fanciful Hats to Knit -- and ultimately led to a completed project that I finished the same day that I started.

Perhaps, first, I should describe what this book is not. This book is not a detailed technique guide for two color knitting. There's no instructions for how to hold yarn, which yarn to hold in which hand or in which orientation, or how to float versus weave when it comes to dealing with the strands on the wrong side. This is not a book on how to select colors for multi-colored knitting projects, nor does this book specify yarns or colorways for projects. And this is not a book that is going to hold your hand every step of the way. There are patterns in this book, but a lot of decision making is left up to the knitter.

All of this would make you think that this book is rather limited. But I actually found it to be quite the opposite -- it's one of those books that forces you to think a little bit about what you're going to knit and tries to guide you towards getting the result that is appropriate for you.

While Zilboorg does cover a few basics (decreases appropriate to the hats, head band possibilities) the introduction to the book really just sets the stage for the patterns. Most of these designs are geared towards worsted weight wool yarn. She explains how to use the charts provided and provides a simple means for scaling the patterns up and down (the basic patterns are meant for a "medium" sized woman's head), and makes some suggestions for which hats go best with particular head and face shapes. I found her tool suggestions helpful (I've long been looking to enhance my stash of 16" circular needles). Then she launches right into the patterns.

There are 9 basic styles and she does 4-5 variations on each. Most of the variations involve the stranded pattern rather than significant structural changes to the hat. Each variation is done in a different color combination. However, since she hand dyes most of her own wool, she provides no information about the colors beyond what you can pick up in the picture. I suspect for some, this will be a little frustrating, since good color selection can be challenging. For others, picking your own colors is just part of the fun. A means of personalizing the garment to your own pallette -- or at least of using yarn from your own stash without any particular yarn vendor bias. One thing that I particularly like is that almost all these patterns are written for worsted weight wool at 5 stitches/inch -- this means that you get a reasonable amount of detail, but that the project is still on decent sized needles and worked on a reasonable number of stitches. This means that many of these hats can be worked in a relatively short period of time. And if you need a little instant gratification color project, you can get your fix by flipping to almost any page.

Another potential source of frustration or inspiration is the directions for patterns themselves. If you're the sort of knitter who likes a row by row blow by blow, these patterns will leave you feeling a bit put out. Most of the patterns are of the variety:

...select the band that you like the best, cast on a certain number of stitches and knit the band. increase to a larger number of stitches in the following way ... set in 6 repetitions of the first chart, then do 6 repetions of the second chart, using a double decrease at the edges of the chart.

I found this to be quite nice, because it made me think about the construction of the hat and how to mix and match the pieces. But it's meant to be understood that you know how and where to join in a new color, where you should do your decreases. And of course, what colors you use where are completely up to you. I also felt that the two color designs that she selected for the patterns were very nice without being either too traditional or too out there. Very few of them have a particular gender bias and most of them look pretty easy to execute without being boring. Only a few of them have 3 color rows (and, of course, she doesn't offer any guidance on how to handle more than two colors on a row).

I've read some complaints on Amazon that there are many errors in the charts. I didn't see anything obvious as I looked through the book, and there were no errors that I could find in the project I did. Perhaps the edition I purchased last year (the paperback edition) had most of these things cleaned up already. By the way, I love the format of the charts -- they are all black and white with symbols used to represent different colors. I think this is particularly handy when you want to photocopy the chart and stuff it in your knitting bag instead of schlepping the whole book with you somewhere.

My only beef with this book is a minor one -- I really wish it had a spiral binding. The way the book has been put together, you often want to flip back and forth between some of the basic instructions and the pattern charts. I really hate to agressively crease book spines to keep them open (usually this means an early demise for the book in my hands since the pages start to fall out). But this is a little niggle. Certainy not a make it or break it sort of thing.

This is one of those books that I definitely give a three star rating -- a great book if it's the sort of thing that you're into. It's a book with a very specific subject matter -- hats. I think this is a good creative jumping off point, and a nice place to find a project that can give you some pretty close to instantaneous gratification -- especially since most of the shaping for the hats is very simple. It's not a technical manual on two-color knitting, however, so it's unlikely to be satisfying if you're looking to it for that purpose -- better to go out and find a more formal Fair Isle knitting book for that if you're happier learning how to do something from a book that explains all the techniques involved clearly. Now that I've tried one hat out of this book, and with great success on my first two color project, I think it's very likely that I'll come back to it on a regular basis. I can certainly see it as a great source of inspiration when I want something unique and punchy and quick to knit as a gift or just as a pick-me-up for myself.