Obla is a stranded slouchy hat with a simple, repeating, all-over Fair Isle motif. The longest you’ll have to carry a colour is 3 sts, so there is no need to worry about weaving in the strands to prevent long floats because there aren’t any. The majority of the rows are my favourite, alternating colours every other stitch.

Remember to hold the two colours in the same position in relation to each other as you’re knitting. For this sample, I held the background colour in my left hand and the foreground colour in my right because I’m silly and I tend to forget that they’re supposed to be held the other way.

The basic rule of thumb is that whichever colour you want to be more prominent should run underneath along the back. In practice, this means that the strand you hold at the left, whether in your left hand or just left-most on your right index finger, will be the prominent one. This happens because those stitches are slightly larger than the ones made with the right-hand strand. The difference is enough that you should make a note of which strand you hold where so you don’t accidentally switch their positions halfway through the project.

You could, if you like, make this hat with one contrast colour and many scraps of colours in similar shades for the background. Just make sure you have at least 30 grams total of scraps. Actually, add a couple more grams to compensate for all the yarn tails you’d have to sew in. Unless, of course, you spit splice all the colours together in advance and wind them into a big ball of colour to use as the background.

Don’t forget to join us in the Aknitica Designs group here on Ravelry! It’s a great place to talk over colour choices and give the rest of us inspiration. :)

The colours used in my sample are Knit Picks Palette in Fairy Tale and Sagebrush.

Size: One. Fits Adult/Teenager

Yarn: 60 grams of fingering-weight, 30 grams in each of two colours.

Needles: Size 3 US (3.25 mm) circular needles for knitting in the round. A 16″ will work for most of the hat, but you’ll need 2 circs (Or Magic Loop or dpn’s if your prefer) for the crown shaping.

Skills Needed:

Increasing & decreasing
Sewing in ends
Knitting in the round
Two-colour stranded knitting