The hat was designed for my friend Andrew. Sometime last January, we spent an evening sitting at the Cambridge Brewing Company, sketching out the hat elements that he'd like. In February, we crossed the river to Windsor Button to pick out a yarn, and he (in good, manly taste) went for Donegal Aran Tweed. In early March, I showed him some swatches, picked out a cable arrangement, and knit the body of the hat. But I didn't manage to finish it for him before winter ended.
I kept re-charting and re-knitting the top of the hat, but I couldn't get the cables and ribbing to come together in a way I like. So, I put the hat away for several months. And this month -- November 2011, nearly a year since we started this process -- I picked it up again, knit myself one in red, and finally finished his! I mostly finished it at a dinner party, then got up early the next morning and sewed in the ends just in time for an outing Andrew and I had planned: Open Studio day at the Vernon Street Studios in Somerville.
We had a marvelous time. We wore our matching hat and I smiled ridiculously the whole time. This particular studio belongs to Robert Puig Reyes, whose paintings really captured me and who graciously chatted with us and was even willing to take our picture. See: smiling!
The red one, by the way, was my way of reinvigorating my energy in this design project. It's knit in a handspun wool/hemp yarn that I picked up in Nepal years ago, when Mountain Man and I went trekking there for our honeymoon. It's a thick and thin, DK-ish, sturdy, single-spun yarn. Very rustic, a good match for the Donegal tweed.
When I was thinking of what to name this hat, I thought about something that geographically linked it to the Boston-Cambridge-Somerville area, because it was infused with such a sense of place for me. But that day at the artists studios, I realized that working on this hat was like giving my friend a behind-the-scenes tour of my design studio, so to speak. So, "Open Studio" it is.
If you'd like to knit one, too, you can download the free pattern from Ravelry: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/open-studio
3 comments:
thanks for sharing, i lvoe the looks of it!
Love it!!!
I love hearing the story behind the knitting. I think this will become my next winter hat this year. Thanks for sharing with us. Always a joy to read your postings and view your pictures.
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