A remarkable Shetland beret

Unless you've been offline or hiding under a rock these last few weeks, you'd have heard about Susan Crawford's brilliant new book project the 'The Vintage Shetland Project' that's being crowd-funded through Pubslush. To support the project further and whet everyone's appetites, Susan has organised a blog tour to highlight some of the garments and offer more insight into why this project is so remarkable.

When we visited the farm last summer Susan asked for my thoughts on not only how this beret was constructed (or, when you see the piece, in what order) but how to recreate it. Between us we discussed methods and possible constructions and whether it was even possible to recreate it in a set of instructions. So when Susan emailed and asked if I'd like to talk about this piece on the blog tour, I wasn't going to say no!

Karie Westermann introduced this beret a few days ago and revealed a little behind the mystery and it's history, and why it's an important piece within the collection. I'd like to follow on from there and highlight a few of the aspects to the beret's construction.

From the first photo above, you can see that the crown shaping is the part of the Hat that brings all the other elements together (and you'll know this mantra if you've ever been on my Hat design workshop or asked me about Hat designs ;). Looking closer at the crown, we can see that at least for the final part of the crown is fairly standard in it's shaping - unstacked left leaning decreases on every other round. And that's about as 'standard' as this beret gets.

Looking at the Hat from the inside reveals yet more of it's unusual construction - those wonderful stripes of fairisle that run from the brim up the crown are in fact strips of knitting, and they're knitted at 90 degrees to the rest of the Hat! What's even more fascinating about this is how the pieces of knitting are joined or worked from each other. I haven't seen a sample of the reconstruction or the final pattern and I'm just as curious as everyone else as to how the pattern has been developed.

From this angle, we learn even more about those strips and the shaping of the fabric around them - and we can see that the Hat has been created on the bias, or rather, there are strategically placed increases and decreases to bias the strips. (you can see now why so many of us on the blog tour have have shown an interest in this piece)

Looking at the beret flat from the underside we can see more of the panels between those strips, and also see more of the brim. To me, the brim looks like it's been knitted on afterwards, but I can't remember what we determined about the brim - guess that's another thing we'll have to wait for to be revealed!

If you haven't already, do go and and check out the Pubslush campaign for the book. Although it might be funded (which is no mean feat and bloomin' brilliant news!) every additional penny raised will be put into the project and Susan's keeping everyone up to date with that. 

You can also read much more about the project, the reasons as to why and how, by following along with the blog tour and keeping up with Susan on her blog, Twitter or Instagram - she's been sharing daily photos as a teaser.

Thursday 9th July	KnitBritish
Saturday 12th July	By Gum By Golly
Monday 13th July	Hazel Tindall
Wednesday 15th July	Ella Gordon
Friday 17th July	Jess James
Saturday 18th July	Jen Arnall-Culliford
Sunday 19th July	Maja Karlson
Monday 20th July	Karie Westermann
Tuesday 21st July	Rachel Atkinson
Wednesday 22nd July	Woolly Wormhead
Friday 24th July	Deb Robson
Saturday 25th July	Julia Billings
Sunday 26th July	Helene Magnusson
Monday 27th July	Tom Van Deijnen
Wednesday 29th July	Kate Atherley
Friday 31st July	Jamieson & Smith
Sunday 2nd August	Donna Druchunas
Monday 3rd August	Felix Ford aka knitsonik
Tuesday 4th August	Ysolda Teague
Wednesday 5th Aug	TBC
Thursday 6th August	Donna Smith
Friday 7th August	Susan Crawford

All images are copyrighted to Susan Crawford and are reproduced with kind permission.