To Gather Flowers Constantly

The first class I took at Madrona was Ruth Sørensen's Kauni Hat class. Ruth designed a batch of 10 or 12 gorgeous hat patterns using Kauni yarn, and brought a giant bag of yarn for each of us to choose from. I chose the low-crown flowered hat, and these two colors:

The colors in my stash are grey and blue, so I thought that these would be a good change--and I wanted a lot of contrast, so these fit the bill. Strangely enough, my next-seat-over neighbor used a black/gray skein with red, and reversed where she used them. She finished her hat VERY quickly, and it looks great--I just love those goofy flowers. Evidently, there was blue in her "black" skein--I totally missed that.

While we knit, Ruth talked about the properties of Kauni, and showed us a ton things she designed using Kauni and similar yarns. Stephanie posted some photos yesterday of the extremely cute skirt that Ruth designed using one color of Kauni, I was too overstimulated by choices to take any photos during class. This was a three hour class, and although I spent the bulk of it knitting up to the picot edge of my hat, I really enjoyed it. It was enough time to get a good start on the hat, and it was really inspiring listening to Ruth talking about her designs. I've got two different colors of Kauni, and while I like those rainbow cardigans a lot, I'd like to do something that is a little less square-y. I've also been a little concerned about the scratchy texture, since I'm a little bit sensitive to wool, and it was good to feel the sample hats, which were quite a bit softer after washing.

I worked more on the hat after I got home on Saturday, but I'm not quite to the flower section yet:

I started with the darkest end of the neutral skein, and the brightest end of the red skein. Conveniently, both were in the center. My hope is that there will be a lot of contrast this way, but who knows? It's funny to me that the neutral color looks so much darker on the hat that it does in the skein, and that the red looks so bright, and I'm looking forward to seeing how they change. But I'm almost done with the class project from Sunday, so I might have to wrap that up first . . .