The very first fair isle hat I ever came up with was something that made me think of mountains. That hat was an earlier version of Alpstein. At that time, I had worked it at least twice. Once, it turned out so bad, I was feeling ashamed of the result (and angry at my incompetence); even now, when I think about it. But the passage of several years gave me the opportunity to return to the initial prototype and re-design it; while at the same time incorporating new skills and ideas.
Fortunately I had kept the original fair isle chart, in which all 4 colors where worked. It did go through some editing, but that didn’t change much of it. One of the changes was to use purl and slip stitches when blending some of the contrasting colors. The goal was to create an interesting transition and texture, while minimizing the floats. It worked quite well.
Other than that, the hat is quite simple. It is worked top-down in the round and features minimal shaping inside the colorwork.
The yarn is as old as the original prototypes (around 8 years old). I had worked them in the same yarn and colors, and wanted to try a new version, so I had stashed some more. This pretty much explains my stash: 95% of it is yarn that is linked to a specific project or design, but for various reasons has not been worked yet. Only if there were more hours in a day! Right? xD
The yarn is made out of Greek wool and again, it was the first kind of yarn I ever worked with. It is surely not the most extravagant or soft kind you can find, but it holds up to time and use quite well. Anything I have made with it has been fine in the past 10 years.
It is a relatively quick-knit, especially if you are familiar with stranded colorwork. For me, it was a nice design to work on. Fair isle is my absolute favorite technique to knit. I love playing with colors.
Because it is a small project, it was easy to work on even in the summer heat. The most difficult part was the photography, which took place in the middle of the Greek summer. We had more than 32℃, but once we had a cloudy day, I took advantage of it. It really looks like autumn in the pictures, doesn’t it? 🙂
