It seems to me that one of the most interesting — and potentially fun — challenges in all of knitting is designing the crown of a hat. That is: taking whatever stitch pattern you’ve used for the tube portion of the hat and figuring out how to get it to artfully narrow to nothing within the few inches of the crown. Loads of hats avoid the issue altogether by having you, the knitter, simply stop whatever interesting thing you’ve been doing and switch to stockinette for the crown. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But I’m always wowed by designers who step up to the challenge — often making the crown the most beautiful and interesting part of the whole hat. These four great examples have floated across my screen lately, all of which happen to take a “star” approach, so I just wanted to take a moment to point at them and clap.
TOP: Tea Jenny by Kate Davies (who’s always good at crowns)
MIDDLE LEFT: Lowbrow Hat by Thao Nguyen (to go with your fave from the cowls roundup)
MIDDLE RIGHT: Gwyneth by Leah McGlone (I’m dying to knit this!)
BOTTOM: Fjordland by Dianna Walla (from Pom Pom 7)
I’m sure you’ve all got loads more examples of outstanding crowns, and I hope you’ll share them in the comments.
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ICYMI this week is more (gift-worthy) beanies: Beautifully textured hats.
I LOVE that lowbrow hat!
Ooh, I love the Tea Jenny star! I just finished a Jacques Cousteau hat this week and was pleased how the ribbing and the decreases worked together- http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/jacques-cousteau-hat – almost made the solid-black knitting interesting. I love black garments but don’t enjoy knitting them!
Swirling ribs — I like that.
The Gwyneth reminds me of another gorgeous cabled hat with a great crown: Brooklyn Tweed’s Habitat (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/habitat). I do really enjoy the ribbed brim of the Gwyneth, though!
Yeah, that’s a beauty.
I love all of them especially Tea Jenny! Maybe time to finally start one of my knitting resolutions for 2013 – colorwork!
Kate Davies is so consistently excellent. Sigh. Her Ursula cardigan has been on my to-knit list forever! (If I only I could settle on some colours…)
Tanis Lavallee recently released a couple of hat patterns (Bract and Brixter) that have excellent and pleasing crown construction. I especially like the looks of Brixter, which is destined to be a hat for my boyfriend, I think.
These are what I aspire to making. Lovely!
Oh LOVE!
Oh, wow, Karen, I’m with you this one. How to shape a beautiful crown totally fascinates me! I especially love making hats on the slouchy side, which means the crown will be more visible. Thank you for the examples – they’re gorgeous.
How about Mary Anne Hat by Amy Christoffers and Yukimi by Maureen Hefti?
I love that Mary Anne hat — blogged about it when it came out — but will have to look up the other one!
Oh that’s so many nice hats/ crowns :)
By the way thank you so much for letting me share your Wabi mitts picture/ link on my blog – the post is out now :)
This is distracting me from the holiday knitting I must start! I see Gwyneth being on my list, for me of course!
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