If you’ve ever listened to how I design knitwear in the Knitting with QueerJoe Live video, one of my techniques is to change things up by turning stitch patterns on their heads.

Last Bindle Hat – I Change Things Up

I’ve learned a lot in this latest pattern design, the Bindle Hat. Mostly, I’ve learned more about Latvian braid than I could have imagined could be learned. One of the more surprising discoveries was that the right side and wrong side look very different, but both look very appealing.

The public-facing side looks like big-stitch stockinette stitch on its side. And the non-public-facing side of the fabric looks like big-stitch stockinette.

I decided to do two things to this final Bindle Hat. First, I decided to use multiple yarns in all blues and greens (as opposed to the confetti colored combinations for all the other hats). Second, I decided to try and make the hat reversible.

Two changes I needed to make for the hat to be reversible. First, I had to graft the flat fabric into a tube differently than the instructions call for. The pattern calls for a 3-needle bindoff. I decided to try a Kitchener stitch grafting instead. The second difference is how to pucker the hat at the top. I just had to try and make it look good on both sides.

With limited success, I think I’ve been able to do both.

We’ll see how it looks after blocking.

Current Knitting

I was able to finish the skull cap sections of the two final Bindle hats.

Now it’s just finishing the ribbing on both. Hopefully on Wednesday I’ll have a full display of all the Bindle hats I’ve made in the last couple of weeks.