Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Dead Fish Hat

It's a craze on Ravelry as the hat is sure to bring a smile to the face of young and young at heart alike.  I finally knit the Fish Hat after joining the KAL in the Namaste Farms Ravelry group.  And can you say LOVE!  

It is an easy, fun and quirky knit.  Once over the idea that stripes do not need to necessarily be the ones in the original pattern, knitting was a breeze.  Just wasn't very fish like in my opinion, unless you were in love with Clown Fish or African Cichlids.  I'm more of a Striped Bass or Rainbow Trout kind of girl;)

Enjoyed it so much that we started a KAL on my shop's Ravelry page:  A Tangled Yarn.



Want to know what I did different with my Fish Hat? Well, here you go:
After doing the short row lips…..
K3 from ball A, K3 from ball B Repeat to end of round. Repeat for all rounds.
When it came to the decreases, I either K2tog or SSK depending on which stripe I wanted to decrease on that round. On the knit rounds, I made sure that if I decreased a stripe from 3 stitches to 2 , that I only knit 2 on the knit only rounds when I came to that section of stranded knitting…. and so on and so forth:)
Let me tell you, I would not recommend using all of the same color way for the striped like I did. At one point, the stripes were VERY similar in color during the last couple of decrease rounds and it was pretty hard to keep up with the strands.
The eyes were easy peasey even from someone like me who can crochet, but would never claim to be more than able to follow only the very simplest of crochet directions.  Using worsted weight (#4) black wool yarn, I did a slip ring and crocheted about 9 single crochets into the slip ring and joined using a slip stitch.  On the next round change to  white worsted weight yarn chain 1, do a single crochet in the previous round's single crochet, do 2 single crochet into the next single crochet of the previous round, repeat to end and join with a slip stitch.  Very sorry if these directions are not very easy to follow, I'm a Knitwit not a fabulous hooker:)






6 comments:

Delighted Hands said...

I am going to have to join on this band wagon! The hat is simply stunning-fun to knit and to wear! Good hints on the yarn-I ran into trouble once doing that on mittens.

Unknown said...

Wow! I just found your knitted dead fish hat on Pinterest! It's amazing. What yarn did you use? I love that variegated look--so full of rich colour and texture. Great great job!
Kindly,
Aruna
Vancouver, Canada

Elizabeth Barber said...

I would so like to kncit the dead fish hat illustrated on this page, how can I obtain a copy of the knitting pattern?
Regards
Elizabeth
Argyll,
Scotland , UK

LunabudKnits said...

I have used Noro Silk Garden & Kureyon. Anything worsted weight should work:)

LunabudKnits said...

The link above to the 'fish hat' will take you to the pattern. The instructions here are what I did differently.

K said...

So did you carry the yarn across the back, then? I haven't worked a lot with breaks in color. I did it long ago, but had so many strands across the back, you caught your hand in it if you ever tried putting the project on. And carrying it over seems like it would cut down the elasticity of the hat (expandability). Or did you just twist the other color - I can't figure it out. But I LOVE your version. I've spent hours this morning just trying to find you =

Other Fun Facts..................

I taught myself to knit by watching a woman while on a flight from Scotland to the USA in 1996.

I taught myself how to spin yarn Feb 15th, 2007. I think I've done fairly well:)

'Lunabud' is a combination of two dogs' names I was loved by, Buddy and Luna:)