Hat in art yarn is called ‘Ladies of the Night’ after a painting about such ladies in Berlin. I liked the colours and simply picked fibres to match. It is in blue and blue/green merino with some grey silk subs and red news. I tried to use similar proportions of colour and found it interesting that the tiny specks of red just liven up the whole thing – maybe something to do with there red light area. I also liked the effect of street lights in light grey, although in the hat they don’t show up much. The yarn is spun Z and played S in the usual way and the ply picks out the V shapes on the road in the picture. I often find that a yarn that appears superb in the skein is diminished in the knitting and vice versa. I’m happy with the result as I don’t want to be out and about looking stunning – its just an ordinary hat to keep the wind out of my ears.

For the knitting used the basic hat pattern from Anne Budd’s Handy knitters book of patterns which is good for handspun yarn. There is an icord  loop made on the top so that I can hang it up and the decoration around the brim is my own devising – picked up stitches around the brim and knit twice into each stitch for two rows and then cast off. I use double-pointed needles and do a section of the brim at a time and can gauge how much wool I have to play about with. I used all but 6 inches of the yarn.

I sometimes knit the hat body on my knitting machine – cast on 70 stitches and then finish it off on  needles as I’m not very competent with the machine yet.