The Vite Hat

While I was doing all the necessary busy-work for my Sweater Club in October, I pulled out some yarn that Megan (of Nutmeg Fibers) graciously sent me after we had the chance to meet at VKL in Chicago at the beginning of the year, and began playing.

I’ll be honest. I don’t gravitate toward yarn that has a lot of variation. It’s just not ever going to be my thing. But I very much appreciate how much work goes into the process of creating such yarn, especially the ones that are dyed naturally in small batches such as Retreat. So when I received the three skeins I picked (all neutrals with the least amount of variation she had) from Megan, I didn’t anticipate I would make anything from it immediately and put it in my stash.

After months of working on sweater designs, I was keen to try something completely different and I started swatching. The yarn is so lovely. It is kissed with alpaca which lends lovely drape, but also has the loft and memory of plenty of wool. It sits somewhere between Sport and DK weight, which is a great range for lots of possibilities. It also has some thick/thin variance (similar to hand spun – even though it is milled that way), so I doubled it up to see what that would do. I had put the skeins in a stash drawer with a few odds skeins of Isager yarn, and as chance often goes, the colors of two skeins of their Silk Mohair matched so perfectly.

Suddenly, the fabric needed to be a hat. Preferably a simple one.

Welcome, Vite—a quick-knit hat that can be worn reversible, with or without a pom-pom. Just in time for winter!