No, not a typo! I just finished Katie’s Kep, the 2020 Shetland Wool Week free hat pattern. I was looking forward to this excuse to do a little fairisle knitting. My arthritis didn’t appreciate the top of the crown, but I soldiered on! I was lucky to have the main colors in stash. I wish that my purple was a bit softer. I should have substituted something else!
I experimented a little bit with a technique I’ve used haphazardly in the past for mitigating the “jog” you get in fairisle patterns, that amounts to more of a break in the continuity of the patterning. Here you can see what I mean on these Fjord Mitts. The back of the left mitt shows the break in the pattern caused by working in the round. I wear these mitts with the bad side down, so no one can see it! But hats are different…there’s nowhere to hide!
A recent Interweave Knits (Winter 2020) had a great article on how to manipulate the pattern to minimize the break. I charted Katie’s Kep in Excel and played around with the transition from one round to the next. It was semi successful:
The top motif was totally cut in half and “broken,” but mine is only kind of broken! The hat is very large, but my husband and I both have big heads so the fit is perfect!
PS — Wore my kep on a morning walk today. It was cool and breezy, but my kep kept my ears and head warm! It fits perfectly, too.