La Benaize Hat Reveal

My new fair isle hat design is complete and as promised, here is a better look at it! I even came up with a name for it already, which is surprising as I often hum and haw for ages over the name. I’ve decided to name it after La Benaize, a river that runs through the woods next to the cottage we are staying in at the moment in France. After a stressful last few years in the Netherlands, living here has given me the room to breathe and the peace of mind to get my knitting mojo back. Hopefully my blogging mojo will surface again soon too.

It’s still sometimes it’s hard to believe that after living so long crunched up in the city in the Netherlands, that I can just walk across the road to this… it fills my heart with so much joy, I don’t really even have the words to describe it. I think that subject requires an entire blog post of its own.

So yeah, I love this hat! It’s light and soft, which is perfect for this wonky autumn time of year where it’s chilly, but not super cold. I find some hats are just too warm at this time of year but the Stone Washed yarn is perfect. I can wear it without sweating to death!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I started this in an attempt to use up the leftover yarn from my BlueSand Cardigan and when I started I wasn’t sure that the Stone Washed yarn would really work well for fair isle. It has that halo fuzz, it’s not a solid colour with that white running through it, which I thought would take away from the look of it, but I’m so glad I decided to give it a go anyway. It worked surprisingly well and I still love these colours together so, so much… even though I’m pretty much wearing my cardigan to death. Surprisingly, I’m not sick of it yet.

I also wanted to make this an easy fair isle pattern, so that anyone who doesn’t have a lot of experience with fair isle is able to do it with ease. I think this would be a good learning project as it doesn’t require a lot of experience with carrying the yarn over long areas and there are never more than two colours used in a single row. Once you start working fair isle, you realize how much easier that makes things.

I’m working on getting the pattern written out at the moment and will be back with it soon! If I don’t have it out this by the end of next week, send in the goons!

This design is made with Sheepjes Stone Washed yarn.  You can find a list of retailers that sell it here on the Scheepjes website.  It is also available worldwide via Deramores and Wool Warehouse*.

* Affiliate Link