The Eagle has Landed

If you read my blog somewhat regularly, you might remember a past post about a special hat - a Suedtirolean Hat - I was designing and knitting for my Dad for his birthday.

After what seemed like a zillion design hours [compared to actual knitting time] I converted a Suedtirolean Coat of Arms (COA) graphic into a workable knitting chart. The chart had way too many colour shades, so I had to painstakingly [=manually] convert it into three colours using Photoshop. The next hurdle was that it was far too big (48 stitches and 40 rows) and would have knit up to 5 x 6 inch motif. So I had to reduce the image by about 40% and eliminate quite a lot of the detail [what a shame].

Then the swatching began with Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift 4-ply yarn. Aye, aye, aye! I thought I counted right, and cast on 170 stitches using 3.25mm needles. Well, I was wrong. Way wrong. After frogging a couple of times, I finally cast on 140 stitches using 2.75mm needles. Then I switched to 3.25mm needles for the stranded motif work and the crown of the hat.

I had to write the knitting pattern "on the fly", but quite honestly, you can't go too wrong with a hat.

It's hard to fit a hat on a head that is 20,000km and 9 time zones away! Mum gave me Dad's head measurements, but I still had to improvise...

Meet my Dad!

The hat turned out really well. It was my first fully stranded hat project. The only change I'd make would be to cast on more stitches and use 3mm needles for a denser fabric. I'm going to block Dad's hat once I get to Australia and stick it on his "real" head [hehehe].


If this hat could talk, what an amazing guinness story it would have:

Well mates, I started off as sheep fleece in Scotland. Aye! I was processed into yarn and then imported into Canada. I was then purchased by an Aussie who knit a Suedtirolean motif from my lovely woolen fibres into a hat. She then flew me all the way to Australia for her Dad!

Cheers big ears!