Finished Fake Isle!

 

Yesterday, this hat was a pile of roving, and today, it's a hat! I started around 10am yesterday, and finished it around 9pm (with breaks for food and Scrabble, while also watching about a dozen episodes of How I Met Your Mother on DVD). I came across the pattern at Spunky Eclectic, while stalking the owner of said site, who is a yarn swap pal for an upcoming project. The fiber is the same stuff that Manos uses to make their yarn, which I ordered forever ago, and which just arrived recently. I don't think I'll work with the fiber again -- soft though it may be, it was felted to the point that even pre-drafting was only moderately helpful, and I had to fight with it a lot as I spun, which made a mess of my consistency.

In any case, the roving is variegated, but I pulled out a bunch of the darkest parts (since I had to predraft the heck out of it anyway) and used the dark as a contrasting color, and the lighter hues as my main color. I swatched (for a change), settled on size 6s, and then worked the hat up from there.

I was surprised how addictive the fair isle was. It's a simple repeat, simple enough that I could memorize it as I went around, and stranded knitting in the round with two colors came pretty easily to me, since I can vaguely knit continental (since I can't purl, the in-the-roundedness of the hat was key). Going from circular to dpn was challenging, as my floats got a little wacky, but I think it'll work out. I love the fair isle band that goes across the middle, because my knitting does pull in a little in the fair isle sections, and that actually makes the hat fit more snugly on my big old head.

I'm addicted. I think I might jump into anemoi mittens next!