Osborn Fiber Studio

Welcome to day 7 of the Migraineur book release advent party! The countdown continues – hopefully the next pattern you see will come with an ordering link.

Last time, we looked at small clamshells on gloves. Today’s pattern, Toasthead, puts slightly larger clamshells on a hat, inspired by the pillowy top of a good loaf of bread.

My goal for this fair isle pattern was to have large, distinct clamshells, while always keeping floats at five stitches or shorter. Aside from a couple points across the end of a row, I achieved that with this pattern. And as always, bringing a repeating pattern to a point on the crown of the head is an exercise in experimentation.

On Stringbean, the hat has quite a slouchy fit, as I think it still would on most adult heads. For more of a beanie/toque, you could easily start the fair isle pattern on round 9, or swap colours in the crown and start it 8 rounds earlier.

Although the scale is different and the ribbing style is different, the mittens and hat clearly form a set.

The Butter on Rye colourway (above) has its own sort of cheekiness with its bright yellow on a darker neutral. For the Allfruit colourway, it was a little challenging to fit all the colours of Milarrochy Tweed on that I wanted to. I managed it by including Gaskin (green) in the cast on, and Snapdragon (red) in the crown. This would also a perfect opportunity for a bit of a handspun gradient.

The bright and changing colours make the narrowing clamshells look like they’re turning into arrowheads, coordinating with the leaves in the middle of each clamshell. What do you see in this inkblot test of a crown?

The way clamshells interlock with each other, you can adjust your float crossings to keep the colourwork balanced. At any given time, you’re working the bottom half of one clamshell and the top half of another. Whichever colour you’re using for the top half of a clamshell, cross that colour under (in two-colour fair isle, hold it in your left hand) until you’ve completed the curve. The clamshell will be emphasized with slightly looser stitches, and the inner motif will be kept tight and small. Then, when that clamshell is complete, switch which colour crosses under (or just switch hands)!

This was one of the last pieces of this collection that I designed, and by this point in the process, I just wanted something fun. Designing and knitting this hat was a joy, and brought together so many of the skills I’ve developed along the way.

We’ve had small clamshells and medium clamshells – building toward hands down the largest project in the book, and the cover image. See you next time!

Thanks to Ruth O’Nell for knitting both Butter on Rye samples, and to Stringbean for modeling, gamely looking sunward on a very bright day.