Thursday, January 30, 2014

"Epic" in Purples

Ever since I made the first Epic hat, in beiges, I had been hoping for a chance to make one in purples.  I finally got the call for one as a Christmas present,  for a four year old girl.  Super excited!

I started with going through my stash.  I plucked out anything in pure white, lilac, lavender, purple and plum.  I didn't have as much as I had hoped.  So, I headed off to Michaels' to stock up.  It takes a lot of yarn to make these hats--not actually for the individual hat (less than 200gr), but a large variety is needed, though only a few yards for each colour (at the start of the hat, about 60" per row, or just under 2 yards, but I usually do more than one row of a yarn).  Each of these hats has been a financial loss, though each one has enriched my stash tremendously, LOL!!

 I got them out and organized them, I used a black backdrop to even out the background and make the yarns stand out more.
 As I played with them (and this wasn't all the yarns I ended up using), I noticed that there were two types of purple.  A bright purple, and a more plum type purple.  I wasn't sure which way to go!  I decided to throw caution to the wind.  The hat is for a four year old who loves purple.  So, all purples shall be in it!
 Got off to a great start, though I didn't have as many bright whites as I would have liked (having used up some on those Santa hats!).  I was trying to be mindful to not have a long white section, but once again, I think I should have shortened it.
 I blended in some grey as I went up, hoping to soften the transitions between colours, and to tie the two shades of purple together.

 Reminds me of snow and ice.  Don't know if you can see it, but there are some tiny little sequins in there!
A little bit of tuck for texture in the plain yarns.  One difficulty with this hat is the frequently changing gauge of the different yarns.  I didn't get it right in the transition between the tuck and the bulky lilac.  Blocking helps somewhat, as does remembering that this was going to a four year old non-knitter :)

 In the end, I quite liked it!  Always love the tassels.  This time, I made it so there was only a little bit of the lighter colours in the inner part, and dark on the outer, to continue the darkness of the tip of the hat.
If anyone is interested in their own Epic hat, I have a stockpile of beiges, browns, greens, pinks, and purples now.  I do have quite a bit of blues too.

Yarn In: 16 153gr
Yarn Out:  122gr + 16 533gr = 16 655gr

Balance:  502gr more sent OUT than IN
Costs: $378.91/365 days = $1.04/day

1 comment:

365 Dresses said...

Great looking hats!!