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Hat Heads: 1 Man + 2 Knitting Needles = 50 Fun Hat Designs

by Trond Anfinnsen, aka KNITKID

     Did you add colorwork to your list of knitting goals for 2011? If you did, this book is the perfect jumping off point. It gives you a chance to try a small color project, nothing too daunting. This is an easy, interesting read – giving you knitting instructions, history/geography lessons, biographical information, and a couple hours of enjoyment looking at his beautiful creations. This is not only a book of patterns, but it is an introduction to the family, friends, and neighbors who inspired these beautiful designs. Each hat was designed to match the personality, warmth, and essence of the recipient.
      The book contains chapters discussing, yarn, sizing, tools, and help techniques. The designer also included a chapter on designing and another that explains, in detail, how to decrease the crown using his formula. The decrease formula is: the number of stitches minus twelve divided by six equals the number of stitches between each decrease. Did you get that? The book is also indexed. The patterns are simply written, each with a chart and a color picture of the completed project. I was impressed with the size of the book---large enough to easily read and see the pictures, but small enough to fit into your knitting bag.
Trond says, “The purpose of this book is to inspire you to knit one of the hats presented or-even better- to design one of your own.” He achieved one of his purposes with me. I immediately got yarn, needles, etc. and began my project. I decided to try Torunn, page 56. Trond said during his “knittingmania period”, he admits to knitting three hats a day. So I decided to see what I could do. I cast on at 1:00 PM. By 5:00 p. m. it was apparent that I was not knitting at 3-a-day speed, so I took a break. I had done a lot of knitting, but the small needles did not produce much fabric.
      Because our Guild donates so many hats, I decided this book would be a good resource for our library; we have one copy. It is especially appropriate at this time because of our 2011K12K Challenge. It will provide you with additional ideas for hats and it will help you to meet your goal of attempting a colorwork project.
      You can view Trond's projects on Flickr; he's KNITKID. You can also browse the book on Amazon.com.

-Review by Reola Boyd

Buy this book on Amazon

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