THE DAILY CHUM

Let’s talk hats here for a second.

If you live somewhere where there’s a fourth season (winter), or if you’re like us and only have two  (Bug Season and Freezing Season), hats are kind of a necessity.  You lose most of your heat out of the top of your head, they say, even if you’re not pulling a Sinead O’Connor and shaving it to be bald and edgy.

Hats are one of those things to knit that can go either way.  Either you can have the quick-and-dirty, large-gauge and fast kind that you crank out with an almost-alarming speed, or you can go creative, and wear bits of Art on your head, not to mention all the shades inbetween.  It’s just such an open palette, waiting for your Knitterly Hand to give it a spark of life all its own.

Enter Wooly Wormhead, and her new book, “Going Straight”.   For just about $20, you can download a copy (or spend the $31 to have a nice traditional physical copy in either spiral or perfect binding, too) of all the techniques and patterns (24 of them!) you’ll need to straddle that line between form and function…and do it ALL ON STRAIGHT NEEDLES.

No, seriously.  You read that right.  ALL of the 24 patterns are done on straights.  There are  beanies and buckets, stockingcaps and hats on the other side of the Kinda Weird line (in a good way), all done without ever touching a single DPN.

From her introduction:

Within the pages of this book you will find a collection of modern,
wearable Hats that are all designed to be knitted on straight needles,
and straight needles alone. Each one is knitted sideways allowing a
manipulation of stitch and level of detail that may not be possible with
vertical knitting. And in this book you will find clear and instructive
tutorials showing that grafting really isn’t the work of the devil.

You could of course be a knitter who loves nothing more than
working with DPN’s and circulars or one who just loves seaming. But
you might just fancy a change, and that’s alright too.

Now, she may not have convinced me yet that grafting isn’t demonic in nature, but these hats?  Definitely drool-worthy, and they look like an amazing amount of fun to knit.   There are large pictures of each of the hat forms, a recipe for its creation (written instructions and how-tos) and charts for each, as well, for those of you who are more of the Chart Type.    Ms. Wormhead definitely thought of her audience in the writing of this one, taking into accounts all the different types of knitters out there and providing both the written and charted forms of her patterns.

Go take a look.  You may just find that your head is warmer just looking at it all, and that next Christmas is already taken care of, in one fell swoop of a straight needle.

(p.s. To Ravelrians — the book’s already in the database, so you can see what all the patterns look like ahead of time.  Freakin’ fabulous.)

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