Sunday, June 18, 2006

Your Rights @ Work beanie + free pattern



This beanie is for one of my friends to wear at the upcoming Your Rights @ Work rally. I wanted it to be quite wearable out in public after the rally, hence I decided to just go for a subtle stripe on a basic black beanie.

Pattern requirements:
80 grams black 8-ply wool
small amount of orange 8-ply wool
40cm circular needle - 4mm (or 3.75mm if you are a loose knitter linke me)
set of 4mm (3.75mm) DPNs
Wool needle

(Try not to buy any of the above from Spotlight until they stop offering staff AWAs that leave them worse off than if they were being paid the Award rate. Search your stash and/or support your local wool shop. The orange should be 'safety orange' and can be a bit tricky to find in pure wool - I found the colour in the Naturally New Zealand brand. I thoroughly recommend pure wool over acrylic - much nicer to knit with, warmer to wear and longer lasting. There are machine washable wool yarns available.)

Construction:
Using black yarn, cast on 120 stitches onto the circular needle. Join, being careful not to twist, and place marker(a scrap of yarn works as well, if not better, than the fancy stitch markers).
K2, P2 rib for four rounds. Break off black yarn.
Using orange yarn, K2, P2 rib for four rounds. Break off orange yarn.
Using black yearn, K2, P2 rib for a further 28 rounds.
Rounds 37-50: Knit.
Round 51: *Knit 2-tog, K13 ** Repeat from * to ** until the end of the round
Round 52 (and all even rounds from this point on): Knit
Round 53: *Knit 2-tog, K12 ** Repeat from * to ** until the end of the round
Round 55: *Knit 2-tog, K11 ** Repeat from * to ** until the end of the round
At this point you'll need to change to the DPNs.
Continue in this fashion until only 8 stitches remain. Cut a tail of about 15 cm, and use the yarn needle to thread the tail through the final 8 stitches. Neatly darn in this and all other ends, remembering that the brim will be turned up when the beanie is worn.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a great idea - a rally in the middle of winter will require a beanie too. : )

Also - what Spotlight are doing is woeful - how can they try to encourage shopper loyalty when they cannot be loyal to their staff!

Taphophile said...

More power to you - great beanie. I sent my Spotlight card back with a little note telling management exactly why they will not be getting any of my disposable income. Maybe we need a boycott Spotlight button for our blogs!