Fair Isle patterns have intimidated me forever, with their complex color palettes, and the idea of knitting one scared me silly. How do you know what colors to choose? What if you pick a wrong one? What about contrast, and warm colors and cool colors? What about rhythm and repetition of colors? There just seemed to be so much to keep track of. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from knitting, it’s that the best way to learn, is by doing.

So I designed a hat that allowed me to play with colors, and try out different combinations, to see what works. I’ve learned that it makes a lot of sense, to lay the tails of the yarns together, and see for yourself whether or not you like a particular triad of colors, before you start knitting a color band. And if you don’t like it, taking out a few rows in a hat, is much less traumatic than ripping out rows in a sweater. The pattern is simple - each row is either all one color, or K3 of one color, and K1 of another. So you can focus on your colors, rather than reading the chart.

You can use scraps, or buy yarns especially for this project. Many yarn dyers sell small skeins of yarn, called “mini-skeins”, which are perfect for projects like this. And many mini-skeins are sold in coordinating sets, so someone else has chosen colors that they think will coordinate nicely, and saved you the work. With each hat I knit, I feel more confident. I doubt I’ll be knitting a fair isle sweater in the next couple of weeks, but the idea doesn’t scare me like it used to.

I knit the sample hats from Berroco’s Ultra Alpaca yarn, simply because I had a lot of odds and ends laying around, but you can use any yarn that calls for a size 8 knitting needle.