Introducing Sproutling

The 5th Playful Woolly Toppers pattern has been published today! Meet Sproutling.

This design has a bit of history... it was originally designed to be part of the Bambeanies collection, so it's been sitting around here for two years, patiently waiting. There was something about the way the pattern was originally worked that niggled me, and one of my testers had a bit of trouble working through the joining that occurs at the top of the Hat. For whatever reason, these niggles remained niggles, and I wasn't going to publish a pattern that hadn't had all of it's kinks worked out. So it was shelved.

At some point last year I picked up the design again, and low and behold, the solution to the niggle was as clear as day. Isn't that always the way? Sometimes the simplest solutions will be staring us in the face but we won't see them until we're ready to. It's not even a difficult thing, more a fiddly thing, and now it's explained much better. My tech editors have gone over it all again too, as those picots (which are fully explained in the pattern) like to mess with the maths, and it's already to go.

Once the photo shoots for Playful Woolly Toppers were under way, it was clear this Hat was yet again proving difficult. We modelled it on Silvia, yet her short hair did not suit this deep Hat one bit, and it was way too unflattering to share. I whipped up a whole bunch of samples in different sizes, and had one of Aran's girlfriends model (the young lady who shares the Bambeanies cover) and yet those shots were lacking, mostly I suspect, down to our lively model being unable to stand still.

I then asked whether Elsa - who's in these photos - would be willing to try, although I wasn't sure that the Hat would fit her, but thought we'd give it a go anyway. And in a 10 minute photo shoot, squeezed in between showers of rain, we got the best shots of this Hat that I could ask for.

And so this Hat finally has it's moment! Which I'm very glad about, as it works so well with the rest of the PWT Hats.