Forestry, revisited

With the great rephotographing and great reformatting projects, some patterns have had more of an overhaul than new photos or the shiny new layout. Some are getting new sizes, some getting written instructions to match the charts. And some are getting whole new styles added.

If I said this was my Forestry pattern, would you recognise it?!

Originally published in Yarn Forward magazine as a lace beanie, Forestry has long since held the potential to be a slouchy Hat. In fact I’ve found myself explaining how to do it a few times and when I started the great reformatting, I realised I had the opportunity to not only write in a slouch version, but knit it a fresh new sample and get shiny new photos.

And it’s surprising how different the same Hat looks when you tweak the brim slightly and throw in some increases! The rest of the Hat is exactly the same - the crown hasn’t changed at all, and the repeat section in the body remains the same, it’s just worked for a little longer. The key difference, besides the cast on number and the increase at the brim, is the amount of times the motif is worked around the body. Because it would need that to create the volume a slouch Hat needs, and it really does make a difference visually.

This is the original beanie, rephotographed. And doesn’t it look different, even though it’s almost the same? That’s the beauty of Hat shaping and something that I’ll forever be fascinated with!

The original pattern, given it’s wide motif, lacked some sizing options. With patterns like these I’ve written in extra notes to help you achieve a wider size range through tweaks in either yarn or need sizes. Because this Hat is constructed with a series of vertical panels, adjusting the number of panels makes for easy size adjustments. Grading with gauge is a mighty useful skill and one article I’m hoping to get finished pretty soon is about just that. My plan is to add it as a tutorial download with the patterns, so you can check your size and work out how to achieve the perfect size for you.