easwas

It’s Friday, and time for a new Ooskit pattern release! Up today is a cosy, slouchy hat, called Easwas

The lines of this hat recall many different kinds of geometric branching and convergence, from folded paper

to pylons

Converging lines are a lot of fun to play with when designing knitting fabric and there’s a whole group of motifs in Norah Gaughan’s brilliant Twisted Stitch Sourcebook that form a kind of meditation on geometric convergence and divergence.

I loved this section of the book, in which Norah shows you how, by juxtaposing the angles of twists made on every round with those made on alternate rounds, a really satisfying fabric can be created . . .

. . . in which lines converge and diverge and geometric shapes are playfully linked together.

Norah has a range of simple, nifty methods of ‘drawing’ lines with stitch – such as adding a purl row when a strong horizontal is required. To her line drawing methods, I added a couple of of my own when designing the crown of this hat, where the use of slipped stitches and centred double decreases allows the pattern to flow continuously into the centre, and back out through the body of the fabric. . .

If everything I’ve described so far seems a wee bit involved and technical, it’s important to say that, in the making, none of this is remotely complicated, and that the best thing about this hat is that it is enormous fun to knit.

And I have to say that I really love wearing it too!

And what of the hat’s name? Well, when I was working on Easwas, sitting in my hut in the garden, I could see a couple of builders working hard on the construction of the new extension to my neighbours house. I thought a lot about roofs, beams, and rafters. I enjoyed the link between the work of my hands and that of the builders, and the creative confluence of the different geometric structures we were creating. So Easwas is a name that suggests the work of those builders and that roof: in Scots, it literally means “eaves walls” and it’s a name colloquially given to the small spaces between beams that, in small dwellings, might be used used as shelves.

Easwas is a super-comfortable and fairly roomy hat which needs a good blocking (over a hat block, or lots of stuffing) to round out the lines of the crown, and allow it to sit slouchily.

Like the other Ooskit patterns I’ll be releasing , it’s a one-skein project that knits up quickly, and is really ideal for pottering about in cooler weather.

If you’ve treated yourself to an Ooskit sampler, you could knit Easwas, and then make your choice from the different cold weather accessories that I’ll reveal in coming weeks to make the most of all your yarn.

We also have Easwas kits (including yarn and pattern) in the shop, and the single pattern is of course available as a download, from the KDD shop or Ravelry, to knit in whatever yarn you wish.

I’ll show you Claire’s Easwas shortly, knitted in her preferred Horkel shade – but the weather looks fair today, and I’m off out for a walk. Enjoy your Friday! x