Chasing Meltwater

Welcome to the tenth pattern in the Migraineur collection, Fragilehead. The book is LIVE and here is the ordering info:
Buy Migraineur softcover book on Amazon.ca (also available on Amazon.com and other marketplaces)
If you want a complimentary ebook with your purchase of a physical book, forward your receipt to osbornfiber@gmail.com with your ravelry name. Offer good untill December 31. Please allow 24 hours for your request to be processed.
If you want digital only: Buy Migraineur ebook on Ravelry

With this pattern, we’re entering the last chapter in this series of pattern reveals, and in a way it’s a trip back to the beginning. With the Fragile chapter of patterns, I’m chasing the same image I was after when I designed The Thaw, the shawl pattern which rather kicked this whole journey off.

On one of our first trips down south, it was late spring as we took off from Iqaluit. I remember having a baby on my chest as I leaned against the window and saw the sea ice melting beneath us. The winds had blown the compacted snow into the shape of fish scales, and as those scales melted in the sun, the meltwater formed a diamond pattern of channels between shapes. Meltwater on top of snow or ice takes on a gorgeous aqua colour that stands out against the show. It flashed by too fast for me to juggle out a camera from under a baby, but the image is seared in my mind. An aqua network on diamonds of snow.

The simple fair isle pattern of Fragilehead uses a gradient of five shades of Milarrochy Tweed to make its own network of diamonds. I included two of my favourite shades, the saturated turquoise of Ardnamurchan and the bright-flecked sky blue of Outsea.

I chose to go from dark at the brim to light at the top of this hat, resulting in a sort of stylized circumpolar map, icebergs floating down and sinking in every direction.

The final look is complex, but the knitting itself is very straightforward fair isle with stitches in multiples of three or five. What qualifies as migraine knitting will be different for everyone, but it worked for me.