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Hello and thanks for visiting my blog. I have been knitting on and off for 50 years and I recently learned to crochet. I love looking for wool bargains and making them into something useful. I mainly knit for charity. I occasionally knit for myself and family members if I find a really good pattern or if they ask nicely!!

Friday 1 March 2013

Clunky chunky....

I am not a big fan of chunky wool.  I know it knits up quickly and there are some lovely colours available.  But I am just not keen on the end result.  However, I found a few balls of chunky wool among my last bargain joblot.  I always ponder over the reasons people have for selling their unloved yarns.  Maybe someone else had the same dislike of chunky wool.

But "waste not, want not" is one of my mottoes and so I set about finding a suitable knitting pattern.  It couldn't be a crochet pattern because none of my hooks are big enough.  There wasn't enough wool for a jumper or a blanket.  That left hats and scarves.  I would personally find a chunky scarf suffocating.  So, by a process of elimination, that left hats.  I prefer to knit hats on a circular needle but, again, none of mine are big enough for chunky wool.  As I don't go out of my way to buy chunky wool, I didn't want  to buy bigger needles.

I finally settled on the stretchy hat pattern that can be found on the Operation Christmas Child webpage.  I had the right size knitting needles as I have knitted this pattern before.  Although it has to be sewn up, the pattern is so clever that the seam is almost invisible. This is a very stretchy hat pattern and it will fit most children.  I even adjusted it slightly to use up the last scraps of my chunky wool on the smaller hats in the photo.  I left off the bobbles as I am never sure how easy they are to wash.





The blue variegated wool is Robin Picasso Chunky and the other plain colours are King Cole's Magnum Chunky.  I'm quite pleased with how they turned out.  My criteria were:
  • Will these hats keep someone warm?  Yes, definitely.
  • Would I put these hats on a child of mine?  Yes, definitely.
  • Would I have worn hats like these when I was a child?  Yes, I wore similar hand-knitted hats.
  • Would my daughter have worn hats like these?  Probably not.
Three out of four is not bad and I don't really count the last one because my daughter rarely wore any type of hat.  As soon as she was able to pull off her baby hats, that's exactly what she did.

I will definitely knit this pattern again.  It can be knitted with 2 strands of dk wool together and I have plenty of that.  There are only 57 stitches per row and only 33 rows in total.  That's what I call a quick knit.

5 comments:

  1. Great criteria - and yes I still have a well worn purple cabled 70s number with a huge bobble...Q4 would get a similar answer here too!
    Ali

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  2. They are lovely Una, I'm like you I'm not a fan of chunky in fact I find it quite difficult to work with, but tose hats are lovely and will certainly be cosy and warm :)

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  3. You're right, three of four isn't bad at all. My daughter wouldn't have been caught dead wearing a handknitted hat (it wasn't the rage like it is now), but now she's a mom and I think it's funny that she's inflicting the same torture of hat wearing on her kids! Great hats, I'd certainly wear any of them!

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  4. Love the hats, like you I'm not keen on chunky but do have some in my stash. Now I'm inspired to start knitting it into hats, & they will go to the Xmas shoe boxes along with some DK ones already knitted. Keep knitting, blogging & inspiring us. Thankyou x

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  5. These are great Una, I can vouch for the pattern as Ive done them and yes they are quick - now Im quite a fan of chunky - great item for charity - well done xx

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