Rainbow and Emergency Yarn Hats

In theory, I've been on a yarn diet this year.  It does have a number of exceptions, such as finishing a yarn series I began purchasing last year, and yarn purchased while traveling or at festivals because these are really souvenirs.

Of course, I have added to the stash otherwise, such as at the fiber group swap (which I decided doesn't entirely count because I swapped out more yarn than I brought home) and because a friend has been giving me her leftover bits to pass along to another friend who does a lot of charity knitting.  Some of which I decided would be transmitted in the form of hats, and since much of the yarn is wool and wool-blend sock yarn, which is quite fine, I've made most of the hats by holding two or three strands together.  I did do one with the yarn just singly:

I liked the neon-splash yarn enough to make this hat with
the sock yarn singly, but it's a very plain basic beanie.

When I found several balls of rainbow-y yarn I decided to figure out a way to highlight the colour changes instead of working the threads together.  This means using very fine needles, and lots of stitches, because I had to use the yarn singly because otherwise the colours would mingle.  The problem is that most of the yarns will make stripes if you knit at the number of stitches in a sock, but hats use many more because heads are bigger around than feet.

How to emphasize the rainbow for the ribbing?  Usually this is worked as part of the hat and thus with a large number of stitches around.  I decided to use a ribbing taught in a class many years ago at a historic home, where we learned to make ribbed mitts in a 18th-Century style.  This ribbing, instead of being done longways, was worked shortways.

Thus I made a long, skinny piece working one row knit, one row purl, one row knit, and repeating these three rows until it was long enough.  Luckily this happened in an orange bit so the stripes came out fairly evenly around.

Next I  grafted the starting row to the final row, and picked up stitches around.  I decided to use four balls, two that appeared to be rainbow sequence, and two that alternated the rainbow rows with grey, alternating the balls.  So I used safety pins to mark each quarter, counting the ribs, and two to mark the start of the round:

Having the two pins was helpful because I had to switch back and forth from a knit row to a purl row at that point because I wanted to use stockinette stitch to keep the stripes most clear.  So I needed to know where to switch and not accidentally continue.  I wouldn't need to do this if the hat were all of a single yarn, as the one at the top of this post is, but to keep the four panels clear I had to work intarsia, which means switching from one yarn to another at a seam:

Above are the inside and outside of one of the three regular seams.  However, the fourth seam is where I had to switch from knit to purl, and because there was only one strand of yarn I had to do a pick-up-and-knit/purl-together maneuver, which left a less pretty seam:

The final result looks fairly nice overall:

At the end, I decided that if I were doing it again, I would have started one of the grey-and-rainbow balls from the outside, and the other from the inside, so the striping would be the opposites.  On the other side, as you can see in the first pair of seam photos above, the yarn has very short stripes, which I also didn't know until I started using it.

Why am I talking about emergency yarn hats also?  I was visiting the friend who had been giving me the leftover yarns, and was trying to travel lightly.  So I also did not take many projects.  I had a cat ball that I was making for a friend, and since I was traveling on Granny Square Day I took some bits of yarn to make a hat.  Which I finished while there:

While packing I had a third project, and thought that might be excessive for a four-day trip, so I left it home.  Which meant that when I finished the pink hat, I was in need of a project!  Preferably one that used the needles I had with me, which were the size I usually use to make a double-strand sock yarn hat, because I thought the friend would have more leftovers for me.

Nope, she'd been working on other projects since my previous trip, and had only one scrap of cotton yarn in the collection box!  What is a fidgety fiberista to do?

My friend's plan for that day was to check out friends' new yarn shop (they had recently moved from their old location), then to attend a knit-and-crochet monthly hangout.  So I definitely needed a project!  I decided that I would buy some "emergency yarn" at the shop, thus helping friends and having things to do, and make charity hats so the yarn would leave my stash immediately.

At the shop I picked up a hank of Cascade Heritage Wave, and also one of Cascade Yarns Cherub Chunky Wave because the "Spring" colourway looked so pretty, even though I didn't have the correct needles.  Both were orphans, the last of their kind, so how could I not adopt them?  One of my friends insisted on using their ball winder to prepare the Heritage Wave, and pulling from both the inside and outside of the ball, I was ready to go!

When we got to the meetup, somebody had brought a bin of yarn and unfinished projects from an estate clearout.  Had I known, no shopping would be required, but I don't mind helping my friends.  Out of curiosity, I sifted through the bin, and most of the yarn was novelty or mohair, neither of which is my favourite.  In a bag at the bottom, with a couple of pattern magazines, was a half-finished blanket.  There wasn't enough yarn to finish it, and none of the patterns matched, so I decided to rip it back to a scarf-width size (since it was long enough) and bind off.  Hence the photo above.

My friend was leaving the next day (as I left to return home) for a fiber retreat at which everybody contributes to a charity collection.  My friend had seven hats and nine scarves. I told her that in my religion the number 18 is a powerfully positive one, so I gave her the scarf and hat to include in the collection.

And between the emergency yarn and some from the bin, I now have five more hats for charity:

The two deep rose ones on the left are from the Cascade Heritage Wave, both in variations of Barley Hat.  I had to finish the second one with some bits of yarn from the donation box.  In front is the hat from Cascade Yarns Cherub Chunky Wave, a basic plain beanie.  Next to it on the right is a hat of black-and-red yarn that was a partly finished sock, with not enough yarn to make a second one.  I filled it out a bit more with some black-with-red-tinge sock yarn from my friend's donations, and it's also a Barley Hat variation.  In the back is a granny beanie I made from some of the leftover yellow and gold of the repurposed blanket.  I thought of another scarf, but I'd been wanting to try this pattern and the two complimentary colours seemed just right for it.  There is enough yarn for another (for which I am reversing the colours, not that it really matters) and there might be enough remaining for a knitted beanie or mittens.

I think it is most appropriate to return these to Texas, so will be donating them to Warm Up, America! at DFW Fiber Fest later this month.  Before I make any more, I want to finish at least one of the make-along shawls; it took a while to get the rhythm of the pattern and I had to graft in a stripe of a different yarn at one point because one of my colours might run out.  All good for now, and I plunge ahead!