Cherie's Hat

The incredible, wonderful, amazing Cherie came up for a visit a few weeks ago and that prompted me to finally put the finishing touches on a hat I had started about a year ago. This was one of those projects where the recipient wasn't planned from the beginning, but became clear by the end. Everything about this hat makes me think of Cherie.

Cherie and I both re-located from southern California to the Pacific Northwest within the last 5 years (me from Sherman Oaks, Cherie from Santa Monica). We had both lived in SoCal for many years and neither of us had a proper winter hat.

I've knit quite a few hats since I moved - and given most of them away. After all, if I give a hat away, I make room for another one to take it's place, right? Besides, how many hats does any one gal need? (Socks, of course, are an entirely different story.)

What made this Cherie's hat? Two key elements:

1 - The colors. I was really pleased with how the colors came together in this hat and they happen to be colors that look great on Cherie.
2 - The style. This style struck me as one that not everyone could pull off. Cherie wears hats really well and pretty much any style looks good, but this one seemed like it would work particularly well on her.

The source of the basic design is the Pemberly Tam available for free on the Lion Brand® Yarn website. I also referenced "Designing a Wheel Pattern Fair Isle Tammy" by Alice Starmore from Knitting Around the World (Threads) (which is available at our local library). The yarns I used are:
- 3 colors of Valley Yarns Stockbridge (50% superfine alpaca, 50% wool): camel, dark green and willow and
- the skein of stash yarn from my "Fire and Yarn" post (which I've decided is mostly-to-100% acrylic)

I quite liked using non-traditional colors (at least they seem non-traditional to me) in a very traditional design. I think the color is a little off in the hat photos, so here are a few shots of the yarn that show the color better (I think). First, all four of the yarns:

The skeins at the top, bottom and right are the Valley Yarns Stockbridge yarns. The one on the top is "willow" (a pale green).

The bottom one is "camel".

The one on the right is dark green.

Now for the hat itself starting with the top:

The other side (with a bit of the inside showing in the center:

A "sideways" shot:

And finally here are a few shots of the hat on ... me. Cherie was not feeling photogenic and I wanted a few pictures of the hat being worn. She did promise to send me photos later and I'll post those when I get them, but in the meantime I'm stuck with me.

Traditionally, this would have a very sharp edge and sit higher on the head, but I preferred just the suggestion of that edge making it softer and allowing it to sit lower.

So a UFOs is now a finished object, Cherie has a winter hat and I have an opening for another hat. Life is good!!

P.S. While she was visiting, Cherie gave me a terrific massage. She worked on a persistent shoulder issue that I've had for a couple years now and she gave me posture suggestions and showed me several stretches to help keep my neck/shoulder muscles long and relaxed. I've been following through with her recommendations and have really noticed a difference. A pretty good trade for a hat, if you ask me.