polar chullo

Ta-da!! The Polar Chullo is finished!



It's so beautiful I almost hated to give it away, but this hat couldn't have gone to a more grateful recipient. I made it for the director of Daniel's preschool because, well, she asked me to. She loves the Toboggan Noggin I gave her before Christmas, and requested another hat with ear flaps. I sent her some links to a few patterns and she chose the Polar Chullo. She's a non-knitter and offered to pay me, but for a project this intricate and complex I think even minimum wage for the hours it took would have cost at least $200. Of course I wasn't going to tell her that. I made it because I wanted to, pure and simple.



Knitting this hat was really, really fun. Except for those earflaps, which were a complete and total pain in the ass because of the back-and-forth in fair isle, but even those didn't take long. It's just so fun to see all those patterns take shape, especially the polar bears marching around and around. The only other annoying part was all the ends I had to weave in at the end. K wants to line the hat with fleece (she tells me she does this with all her hats), so fortunately the inside with all those ends and stranding will be all covered up.



My one modification was to add beads for all the noses. I didn't want to strand along the black yarn for one stitch in the middle of the polar bear motifs, plus beads are fun. I sewed them all on after the rest of the hat was done, but one of these days I'll figure out how to incorporate beads into knitting without having to string them all on the yarn ahead of time.

I'm proud of this hat. I'm trying to get more adept with colorwork, and with each project I see my tension get better and knitting with two hands gets easier and easier. Next fair isle project I might just grow a pair and try steeking, who knows?

Pattern: Polar Chullo by Mary Ann Stephens from Twist Collective
Yarn: Knitpicks Palette in the colors black, white, jay (dk blue), blue (med blue) and pool (lt blue)
Note about this yarn: I like it. It's really very inexpensive (about $2/skein) and comes in 100 colors, so it's great for this sort of project. I have a lot of Palette, actually, because I've got some serious ambitions to make fair isle mittens for me and everyone I know, perhaps for next Christmas. It's a 2-ply yarn, and I wish it were plied a little tighter because as I was knitting and constantly untangling the skeins, the plies threatened to come undone. It's soft, though.
Needles: size 2.75mm, 16" circular and DPNs for a gauge of 9 stitches per inch!

I gave the hat to K today at preschool drop-off, and she squealed with thanks and put it on right away. I think that's an affirmative that she likes it. I did get a picture of her wearing it but forgot to ask permission to put it up here, so that's why you only see unmodeled shots here. It's only about 34 degrees out there right now, which is unseasonably cool even for Wisconsin, so she'll have plenty of opportunity to wear it in the next week or so!

Comments

Anonymous said…
Adorable! Bravo - and how nice that is appreciated so much!
juicyknits said…
Wow, I love this! Nice colours and a great design.
kclblogs said…
so beautifu!!
Anonymous said…
The I-cord really adds a nice finishing touch.
Oma

(There was an umlaut in the verification word. What do people do who don't know how to make an umlaut? Or do all computer-users figure it out??

I think I figured out the answer to the above. i was being smug about using the umlaut, and then it was not recognized, so I should have just typed a u and been done with it.
gay said…
this hat is just the coolest.

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