Saudade

Today’s Knitworthy 2 pattern is Saudade, a slightly slouchy Fair Isle patterned beanie in one of my favourite colour combinations – grellow. 

Deep ribbing keeps things simple and streamlined from the front, with the colourful Fair Isle a beautiful surprise when you turn your head.

The stitch patterns make a sampler of traditional peerie and “X and O” motifs that’s a fun way to try out stranded colourwork or to play with colour shading if you’re more experienced. Three shades of grey and two of yellow are used to subtly shade the patterns.

The pattern is charted to focus on a pattern being worked against a background, rather than on individual colours. If you’re new to stranded colourwork or need a refresher you might like to have a look at the Technique Thursday post on Colour Dominance, and at the guest post by Felicity Ford on Choosing Colours.

If you’re as obsessed with stranded colourwork as I currently am Saudade will be an excellent warm up for another pattern that should, finally, be out later this week. Here I am wearing the Cruden Vest in Shetland a few weeks ago. The design took quite a bit of cutting and re-knitting and grafting to get exactly the fit and proportions I wanted but in the end it’s exactly what I dreamed of. If you’re interesting in knitting this or any other vest along with me — I’m about to finish one and start another and have been documenting the process on instagram using the hashtag #vestvemberkal. It’s the world’s most informal knitalong but I do have a few blogposts planned about inspiration, fit and styling. And there’s an absurd amount of rather lovely yarn in the studio right now so perhaps I can come up with some kind of prize. 

Saudade is the sixth pattern in the Knitworthy 2 collection and is currently only available to subscribers. You can find out more about it and purchase a subscription here.