Elemental Hat - Katara

 My fifth and final hat from the Elemental collection is Katara, which represents the element of water:

Does this design say "water" to you? The way it makes sense to me is if you think about strands of seaweed swaying in the water. I think it would look a lot more watery in the colors I used for the "wind" hat, Opal:

Katara was a real stashbuster. The background color is early handspun, from a blended top with the color "Riverstone" (so there's the water connection, perhaps). It shows up as blue in some lights (especially because of the yellowy-orange contrast color), but it's really a deep purple. This is VERY early handspun which I wrote about in 2009. It's so interesting to read that post now, when I am a much better spinner. The yarn isn't very good, but when I went through my entire handspun stash last summer, I decided to keep it because it was soft enough to use for something. In my experience, even a yarn that looks bad in the skein can sometimes be fine in the end product - and this is one of them!

Let's take a closer look at the yarns I chose:

The handspun on the left is a 2-ply yarn that is uneven and underplied. The yellow-orange yarn on the right is Louet Gems sport, which has a much tighter twist angle. That twist angle helps it "pop" against a background, which was exactly what I wanted here, so I didn't sweat it. The color is "clementine" and it's left over from a baby sweater I made a few years ago.

If you saw the handspun yarn in the ball, you probably wouldn't be impressed:

But can you tell in the final fabric? I don't think you can!

 

The pattern motif is repeated 8 times - here it is after one time. You can see the provisional cast on with waste yarn at the bottom:

I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again: this pattern collection is really fun to knit. And by working all 5 hats in a relatively short period of time, I dialed in some of the techniques I don't use very often. These include:

• provisional cast on (I use the technique with a crochet hook and 1 knitting needle)
• German short rows
• grafting in garter stitch
  

I also found these designs to be somewhat flexible in terms of yarn weight. They call for DK yarn, but I've used some labelled as "sport" and others that were pushing "worsted." At some point, I quit worrying about whether colors were ones that I would wear, as I was in it for the process (and, to some extent, the stashbusting - I used newly-purchased yarn for two and old stash for three). 

If you're thinking about knitting any of Woolly Wormhead's sideways designs, I encourage it! She has some other collections that use this technique, too. I've only done the ones in the Elemental collection: Opal (air), Katara (water), Azula (fire), Toph (earth), and Korra (balance). 

And now, I'll return my attention to the Imperceptions collection!