Winter hats

It’s the time of year; there’s a general call out for hats.

Everybody needs one; perhaps the hats you made a few seasons ago are piling, perhaps their recipients accidentally felted them, lost them, or grew out of them (the subtle message you hear when your sister calls you to let you know that a younger niece is wearing the hat you made for an older niece).

Perhaps their sartorial tastes changed. How can one resist this approach? “You’re such a great knitter, can you make me a hat with cables?”.

Perhaps someone you owe zillions of favors to suggested themselves as a hat recipient. Perhaps in a moment of weakness you promised a hat to an acquaintance (no problem, I can just KNOCK one out and forget all about my truckload of WIPs).

Even I want a new hat, it’s been about 2 years since I acquired new clothes (not a plea for sympathy, truly all my discretionary income has gone on yarn and sewing paraphenalia).

Plus there is always great hat inspiration around. New patterns pop onto the radar screen, and there are also patterns I’ve had my eye on for ages.

Take for instance, the big pom-pom hat which is all the rage this year apparently. Here are the quaintly termed “bobble hats” annointed by the Guardian as the “hats of the moment”.

In order, these hats are from left to right, top to bottom. I have tried to add the list price and fiber content where possible.

1. Striped wool PS by Paul Smith, list price £68, 100% wool.

2. Red and blue By Lyle and Scott, list price £39.95, 50% wool 50% acrylic.

3. Navy Fair Isle Polo Ralph Lauren, list price $95, 100% wool.

4. Fair Isle Superdry.com, list price £19.99, acrylic 40%, cotton 60%. Features embossed leather and printed logo patches, would be a nice touch to jazz up a handmade.

5. Navy and yellow at chintiandparker.com, list price £55, 100% cashmere. Even has its own matching scarf.

6. Wool intarsia knit by Jago, list price £35, 70% acrylic, 30% wool.

7. Oversized striped asos.com, list price £15, 100% acrylic. Pretty simple hat. The neat feature about this hat is the care that they took to lose the purl blip when changing colors, this is a classy touch in such a simple and inexpensive hat.

You can see in this close-up that the Paul Smith hat did not go in for such details:

(Yes, yes I know that this is part of its eccentric charm)

8. Raasay zaini.com, list price £24.99. The only hat in the group that looked crocheted, this hat is also lined with fleece.

9. Cream Gap, list price £15.95. Do not know fiber content, does the Gap make any hats that are not predominantly acrylic?

10. Navy and faux-fur marc-cain.com, list price £119. I like the subtle touch of the faux fur and have some eyelash yarn in the stash that would be suitable for a fur look.

11. Orange by Ikou Tschuss, list price £109. What’s to this? Just a seed stitch cap. I sure hope this is a pure wool garment given the price.

12. Oversized zigzag Missoni, list price £130, 100% wool. These guys do know their knits and their colors. Just gorgeous.

13. Polar bear and snow by Moncler, list price £77, 100% wool. This might be the best value of the high end hats with the double knit brim.

Note the back seam. I’m always pushing myself to make things seamless but the reality is that we’re attuned to tuning out a well-done seam and it’s the rare creature beside myself who would be alert to this.

14. Yellow contrast Topman, list price £12.

Well, this survey confirms my belief that it is fun to be a knitter, not only can you churn out exactly what you want but you can do this in a fashionable manner.

Knitters can use the most gorgeous fibers to get the same result as one of the cheaper RTW hats, and have their own designer hat for a fraction of the cost (never mind the cost of your labor or the fact that you would not purchase the designer hat to begin with).

Even if you are just a babe in the world of knitting, you can produce one of these:

The hat on the left is Von Sono priced at £70, the fiber content is described as 50% wool, 50% other (?!?).

On the right is a hat from designer Eugenia Kim, available at Neiman Marcus, made from Peruvian Highland wool and retailing for $210.

A very similar color of bulky Peruvian Highland wool (wine) is available form KnitPicks at $4.99 per 137 yd hank.

This hat, a bulky knit 1×1 rib with a big pompom would take approximately 2 hanks. A very simple knit, ideal for a beginner and a speed project to for a knitter with more experience. A more experienced knitted could also kick it up a notch with a brioche rib or mistake rib stitch.

Just gorgeous

Exactly what I need in this cold snap!

Gorgeous, cuddly Soft Chunky in Twinkle’s latest, “Twinkle’s Seventh Avenue”.

Fashion forward with beautiful color palette. This designer surely loves the hand knitting community.

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More M&S

Further perusal of the M&S RTW offerings revealed an abundance of interesting knitwear.

In the scarf category are a mind-boggling 189 offerings, many woven but also lots of knits. There are novelty yarn scarves with bling such as this:

And another scarf which I first thought was a loose knit ruched with ribbon:

but which on closer inspection tuned out to look a lot like scribble lace!

Scribble lace is a technique developed by Debbie New and detailed in her book “Unexpected Knitting“

And there’s also a description of the scribble lace technique in the utterly gorgeous coffee table and knit avant-guarde guidebook KnitKnit.

I never get tired of looking at the fantastic cover image of this book.

M&S has other pieces which look like they’ve been influenced by Myra Wood and her “Crazy Lace” techniques.

This is the Indigo Anniversary Collection Asymmetric Chunky Knit Jumper. It’s actually one of their pieces with a modicum of natural fibers, being made from 80% acrylic, 18% linen , 1% metallised fibres and 1% polyamide. The garment is now on sale for the jaw-dropping price of 15 GBP (~$25).

And a scarf I can’t figure out at all; an infinity loop scarf called the “crochet knit scarf”:

This is the maximum close-up I could get, but which is it? Crochet OR knit OR a combination perhaps?

And a sweater that directly copies from the famous Schiaparelli trompe L’oeil bowknot design:

except that the bowtie is a patchwork applique.

Here’s the superb original, knitted in the Armenian technique as detailed by Meg Swansen and Joyce Williams in the book “Armenian Knitting“.

The pattern for the bowknot sweater is available free of charge courtesy of Schoolhouse press. Definitely “in my queue” as the saying goes, but perhaps not until retirement at the present rate of UFO accumulation!

Overall, I found browsing the M&S offerings interesting, illustrating not only the dominant colors of the season, but also what I suspect to be the direct influence of hand knitting design on the mass market.