Meet Toph

Toph is the fourth Hat from the Elemental collection and it represents earth. It's the last of the classical elements as proposed by Empedocles, and is probably everyone's favourite.

Here earth is literally represented by the leaves adorning this Hat. The short rows form the pattern, and the fabric moves around them, almost like leaves moving in the breeze. Each leave within the panel has a different length stalk, as they each move and grow with the fabric to maintain balance.

This was the second Hat I designed for the collection, and it really determined for me exactly which direction this collection would go. I'd several different ideas and options mapped out, and originally they were going to be much more graphic and minimal in nature, and this Hat changed all of that.

The crown on this one is very pleasing, as the leaves gravitate towards the centre. Like Katara, it's almost a perfectly flat circular crown, but isn't quite. That's OK though, the garter stitch forgives.

I really found my stride with balancing the fabric with this design, and thoroughly enjoyed trying out different ways to define the leaves and the spaces around them. Designing short row colourwork where the short rows form the motifs is a lot easier than working the other way round, where the short rows create the background. There are some short rows in the background with this one, but they're few, and they're really only there to balance things up and give the brim some support.

Toph appears in the first series of Avatar, and is an incredibly skilled earth bender. She's strong, determined and resilient, and is credited with developing metal bending. The absolute best place to shoot this Hat was within the remnants of what appears to be a mine, with the metal tracks that used to carry the gravel evident. I loved everything about this location with this Hat.

This has been without a doubt everyone's favourite Hat from the collection, and I suspect it will continue that way. In my mind it's not the strongest design, but I do see it's appeal - it has the classic short row colourwork feel to it. And it's a good Hat to start with, too - the forms are memorable and are relatively straightforward to knit.

Shapewise it's not dissimilar to Katara, in that comfort slouch way. Yarn wise you'll want a skein each of the Bloomsbury DK in Cooper and Oz. I used one skein of the Copper for both Azula and Toph, so you'll definitely be able to get two Hats out of two skeins with this one.

There's only one more Hat from this collection to meet now!

Meet Katara

Katara is the third Hat from the Elemental collection, and represents water.

Katara and Opal share a key feature, and that is is that it's not the short row forms that create the details, but the lines around them. It'll become evident more going forward, but the types of short row forms used in these patterns (i.e. the shapes created by the short rows) are generally used as the detail, the colour that stands out. With these two Hats, those forms sit back and shape the lines around them.

Katara was the first Hat I designed this way, thinking about line, and the effect on the line by the short rows. It took a little juggling at first but once I'd got to grips with it, I rather enjoyed looking at the short rows differently. The easiest way to manage this would be to have the lines run the full length of the Hat (which you'll see later in the final design) but doing it this way affects the balance of the fabric quite differently.

The effect is that of gentle waves, or lightly drifting sea plants, being directed by the ebb and flow of the water. I'm really pleased with this deign, it has a strong yet gentle effect; striking but not overpowering.

I'd say we photographed this one Hat more than any of the others. We shot it against three different murals, in different lights. Tom shot these and had us use the reflectors, as the light was still so strong at 8pm. I don't like reflectors, I don't like the result of flat light on the face, and we shot extras to give us more choice. The best photos of the Hat with the best light (in my opinion!) had a large mural that ended up looking very odd within the frame, so they got ditched. My absolute favourite shots were taken inside one of the old structures with the most amazing graffiti, but the shots are too grainy and not so sharp, even if the mood, light and environment were perfect. I've settled on these now, though - they show the Hat off well which is the most important thing.

One of the things that strikes me as I look through all of the Hat photographs together is the way Beth lends her mood so well and yet so differently to each. There's something so gentle and natural about these, yet strong and powerful at the same time. 

The crown is softly gathered leaning towards flat, and the longest lines from the body reach in towards the centre like tentacles. Did I mention already that I really like the way the lines dance around the body of this one?

Katara is a water bending master, and one of the original characters in Avatar. Infact, the very first scene opens with her, and the story unfolds around her and her brother. She's arguably one of the more mature characters with a strong sense of what needs to be done. Kind brave and passionate, she's an early heroine of the series.

Shape wise, you're looking at slightly slouchy - a little longer in the body and not so roomy in the circumference, but just enough room not to squash the head. The crown isn't mathematically a flat circle, but it's close-ish (there's only so far you can push those short rows at gauge, y'know!)

Yarn wise, this one uses a skein of Bloomsbury DK in Surf and a few yards in Sand. And like all the others, it's graded through gauge, so you'll want to check your needle size and gauge before starting. The sideways knit garter stitch makes for an incredibly stretchy rib, and the not-so-rabid short rows don't really tighten up the fabric (the same can't be said for Azula) so there's definitely some forgiveness in the fabric.

Meet Opal

Opal is the 2nd Hat from the Elemental collection, and it's the quiet Hat of the 5.

Opal was the final Hat of the collection that I designed, and it was the hardest. The hardest to try and think about how I could represent the concept of air. Air is everywhere yet it has no real tangible essence.

I started by drawing out types of clouds in a very representative way, but they didn't work for me, I didn't like the result. Fire worked that way because it was dramatic and strong, but the clouds didn't really look all that effective, more like blobs of white against blobs of grey. It might be more achievable with a finer gauge yarn, where there's more room to add in that many more short rows and create different forms, but here it wasn't working.

I really liked the idea of working with storms, the angrier side of the air element, but again visually that was hard to do effectively. There wasn't quite the room to create large swirling storms clouds, with or without lightening strikes.

In the end, I figured it was better to move away from trying to hammer this one out literally, and go with a more symbolic angle. The symbol for air is generally 3 wavy lines, representing the invisible movement of air. Throw in some dark swirly forms to represent stormy clouds, and Opal was born.

The background to these photos is an old mural of a large pink butterfly inside a very derelict room at the nearby quarry. I'll talk about the photoshoot location more in another post, but as much as I like the pink against this Hat, it was the hardest Hat to get right. The editing, the shoot itself, so many things proved challenging. Everyone who's written a book, especially a pattern book or design collection, will tell you that there's always one that won't behave.

Series one of the Avatar starts with the story of how the fire tribe have all but wiped out the air tribe. In fact Avatar is commonly known as The Last Airbender, and it seems rather apt that this design should be the most elusive of them all.

Opal is from the second series, and is a distance relative of other characters that have Hats named from them. In this series the air tribe have grown strong and their lost skills returned, although it took Opal some time to come to terms with her skills and heritage. Like many of the air tribe, her nature is on the gentler side, and this Hat is certainly a more tranquil knit.

Yarn wise, you'll need a skein of Bloomsbury DK in Soot, and a small amount in Sand. This Hat tripped me up on my yardage estimations (mostly because I'd planned a more even balance of the colours with clouds and such) and so I had to ask the folks at LoveKnitting for a few extra yards! They came to the rescue and I got it all done it time for the photoshoot, which was a mighty relief.

I mention this as a warning that you will be able to get all 5 Hats from one skein each of the 6 colours except you may need a bit more of the dark grey (depending on your gauge, naturally).

The cover is almost done, and we've started working on the layout! (I say we, as I'm not doing the legwork here - team Woolly is in action). The patterns are all through their first round of tech editing and for the final round, we'll have a small army of editors to make triply sure that these patterns are top notch. Normally, I'd do an extra round of editing with one or two editors - this way, I get the same kind of attention to detail only quicker (at least, that's the plan).

We're still aiming for the first week of September for publication, and it's all coming together well.

Meet Azula

Azula is the first of the Elemental Hats that I'm going to introduce, and it represents the fire element. This is the most challenging Hat from the collection - I figured I'd start here so I get a chance to say how (relatively) easy the rest of them are!

Azula features a quite distinctive set up with the two colours that isn't seen in the other Elemental Hats. There's a strong intarsia element to this one, but you won't be knitting a lot of intarsia at the same time. What comes with this Hat though is a brand new grafting tutorial (there's always one, right?) - grafting across two colours. And it's a pretty simple thing to do, too.

This was a challenging Hat to design, but I really like the way the short rows work up the Hat to create the flames. It'such a striking effect! There's a lot more twisting and turning to these short rows than there are with the other Hats, and that's part of what makes it challenging to knit. The Hat is worked in panels, as they all are, so it does get easier. And I promise it's very much worth the effort.

The crown is relatively simple here, and sits just nicely. When working sideways Hats it's inevitable that there'll be some some short rowed stitches that need grafting, especially in garter stitch as there's no way to keep it completely seamless and in pattern at the same time. The way I've designed these Hats is that thanks to the amount of short rows elsewhere, there's very few stitches that'll need grafting as you finish, as the crown shaping is incorporated differently. It's there, but it's not obvious. 

All of the Hats in the Elemental collection are of a similar shape, but not all the same. Azula is the least slouchy, and has a little more width with less length. It's a comfy fit beanie, you could say. All of these patterns are graded through gauge as it would be impossible to grade them through numbers, and there's always an option of adding in a little extra slouch with needle size or blocking (though I'd warn against the latter)

In the Avatar animation, the fire nation are the most dangerous and volatile of them all. Interestingly, there are very few female characters, and naming this Hat was pretty tricky. Azula is somewhat psychotic, and I wasn't keen to name a pattern after such a character. Tom though swiftly pointed out the challenging nature of the pattern and just how fitting the name was!

Tom and I both took photos for this collection, and these are my shots. It wasn't intentional that I did so many and it left me pretty painful afterwards but it was good to be working the lens again for a while. The first shots we got of this were out of focus - the camera really struggled to focus on the short rows in the flames, and we're still not too sure why. In the end though, it worked out well, and I love the dark background to these.

On the yarn front, Azula uses both Russet and Copper of the Yarn Collective Bloomsbury DK. 

And so we have the first Hat of five! The cover to the collection is almost ready and I'm pretty excited about sharing that. 

Elemental will be published the first week of September and it's really not that far away now!

The Elemental collection - the theme and concept

Having introduced the collection and talked a little about their construction and my drive to engineer them, I want to shed some light on the theme.

The name kinda gives it away - they're based on the 4 classic elements - earth, air, fire and water. The 5th element is well, the 5th element. The 5th element is often balance, or aether, and here the 5th Hat features a little something of the other 4 Hats and brings them together as a collection.

I think the beauty of these designs is that you can see which element they refer to, yet if you view them through the lens of a different elemental theory, they still appear relevant and appropriate.

So let me introduce each Hat with it's element, and then I'll explain a little about the naming theory.

Air - Opal

Fire - Azula

Water - Katara

Earth - Toph

Balance - Korra

The astute may have spotted the naming theme already, and if you haven't, the Hats are named after characters in Avatar (The Last Air Bender)

Aran is a huge, huge fan of the animation series (as is Tom, to be fair) and can tell you all the characters, which elements they belong too, and what sort of mischief or mayhem they get up to. It's on our TV a lot, and whilst I can't say that the series directly influenced the designs, I can say that it's played a big part in the naming of the designs.

If you're not familiar with the animation (don't watch the film; it's rubbish) the characters are grouped by, and defined by, their elements, which are essentially nations. Amongst the population are those who can manipulate their element through special powers, and they are known as benders, and the practice as bending. Being able to manipulate air or any of the elements in this way seemed rather fitting to the manipulation of fabric, to the way that the short rows bend and divert the colours through technique. Naming the Hats after Benders was a natural step.

The avatar is a character that can manipulate all 4 elements, and creates peace and balance in the world; and so the 5th element Hat is named after one of the avatars (and, you may notice that they're all named after female characters)

Check the Wikia if you'd like to learn more - Avatar: The Last Airbender

The collection is due for publication on the 6th of September, give or take a day or two. Over the next few weeks I'll talk more about each Hat, it's key features and how it's name was chosen.