If you are a knitter, you love sheep (or, if you don’t like sheep, you are not a knitter)!
So I discovered Donna Smith’s Baable hat with the same enthousiasme as all of you 2 years ago.
This pattern was featured on the cover of the first issue of Shetland wool week annual, and seeing the names of contributors (Kate Davies among others), I didn’t hesitate one second to purchase it (and to my satisfaction, this number is full of interesting patterns and articles).
But somehow, I couldn’t take time to knit this cute hat, until recently.
But my daughter, who turned 10, doesn’t want to wear Peerie flooers hat I knitted for her a few years ago and I had to knit her a hat. Luckily, she accepted the idea of a hat with sheep.
I love the shades of Donna’s hat, but I decided it would be a stash-buster project. I opted for Supersoft from Holst Garn because of its rich color palette (in my stash).
I found Truffle for the soil, and Iced for the sky (not on the photo above, it was an addition!). I thought I had Ecru for sheep but I didn’t find it, I must have used it up.
So for the sheep and snow, I decided to use fonty’s Fado, a very local yarn for me.
For those who don’t know, fonty is a French yarn company installed in the Creuse, a rural department which suffers from depopulation but has a rich history in textile industry – you might have heard of Aubusson Tapestry? They run a mill in this region and offer yarns “made in Creuse”.
Fado is named after the Portuguese melancholic traditional music, because this yarn contains wool produced by black merino sheep from Portugal introduced in the Creuse. And French white merino wool is blended to this black wool to offer a range of natural shades. So this yarn is 100% French, sourced and made in France. Isn’t it a perfect yarn for knitting sheep motifs?
Everything was fine so far, but mea culpa, I used alpaca yarn for black. It was the only black skein I had in my stash and to achieve the goal of “stash-buster project”, I resigned myself to use alpaca yarn.
And as I imagined, it’s been a real fun! The pattern is really well designed and you cant knit it up with a good rhythm. And the outcome is really lovely 😍.
I knitted the hat with Supersoft and alpaca held double, but pom poms can’t be made with double thread. I was afraid that our’s might be too thin and dry, but after washing, it turned out voluptuously gorgeous!
During the photo shoot, my daughter caught our cat who didn’t want to be photographed (?)
but we wouldn’t think so lol!
NOTES
Pattern: Baa-ble hat by Donna Smith
Yarn:
– Holst Garn SUPERSOFT: Truflle (earth) & Iced (sky)
– fonty FADO: #660 (off white)
– Drops ALPACA: #3903 (black)
Needles: 3.5 mm / US 4 & 3.75 mm / US 5
Modifications
– one less sheep (I got 22 sts instead of 23);
– only 7 rib rnds at brim;
– shorter crown.