Update - new edited file with clearer directions, with many thanks to SlowandSteady for the feedback.

Note: you will only need a small amount of 2ply yarn - 8grams in total.

Link to Art and Science Exhibition 2021, Earth Caught Stone. Catalogue

Microscopes magnify our world, they allow us to see tiny details, like Diatoms. Using a microscope is like viewing a secret world, a slight twist and the blur on the plate comes into focus revealing structures, shapes and colours.

This hat replicates the sensation of focussed and unfocussed discovery, and is knit in a super soft cashmere and lambswool. Repeating bumps, swirl around the hat each bump created by a simple technique of dropping down a column of stitches and then knitting the freed stitches as if they were one. The valleys between each bump are intensified with a darker strand of fine mohair and silk yarn – mimicking the blurring and out of focus sensation that occurs as a microscope lens travels in and out of its depth of field.

This pattern is a collaboration, between Grace Duke (doctoral candiate) and myself (lapsed scientist). The collaboration is an ongoing Art and Science Project between Dunedin School of Art and Otago Universit, bringing together scientists and artists/designers to share and collaborate. The 2021 Exhibition focus was Art and Earth.

Under magnification Diatoms fragile and complex structures are revealed and clarified – but the shallow depth of focus required makes the process of looking for each fragment a hunt, a search, and then an intake of breath as the structure pulls into focus and becomes clear.

Shadows unfocused is a one layer textured hat, designed to sit lightly on the head and provide room for hair, or to collapse softly to one side/behind. The exhibition version was knit in fingering weight yarn, a super soft Cashmere Lambswool, and a darker coloured Mohair Silk cobweb weight yarn carried along with the main yarn to add depth and emphasis to the shadows. A total of 50g fingering yarn is needed for the hat and - less than 10grams of the Mohair silk cobweb yarn to emphasise the shadows.

Make your version in any colour you like, but choose a darker finer yarn to intensify the depth of the valleys between the bobbles.

this is the erata for the pdf_2 version of the pattern, Update posted 23 May 2021.

• Row 68 list the Shadow round as the 9th round of bubbles, but it should be the 8th.

• Row 74 list the Shadow round as the 10th round of bubbles, but it should be the ninth

• Row 82 list the Shadow round as the 11th round of bubbles, but it should be the Tenth.