Textured Fun

Although I normally like to play with color sometimes its fun to play around with texture too. Using a combination of different fibers and weight of yarn it can be fun discovering the different fabrics you can come up with. As every year for Christmas I do all my Christmas knitting in September but there is always one person that wants something in December. This year it was my aunt and she told me she wanted a hat. Obviously I couldn't say no. That being said I was not in the mood to put a lot of effort in and wanted this hat to go fast. We luckily had just gotten in this new yarn Bulky by Blue Sky Alpaca, and I thought to myself "its fate, I just have to make this hat now. I have no excuse". The down side was that it did not come in purple which is my aunts favorite color. So I thought how can I get purple into this hat and started looking for a yarn to strand with it, because I do not know if you have met me yet, but I seem to not be able to get through a project without using at least two yarns. So I picked up the shibui silk cloud in the color UV which is a very bright purple silk mohair blend. I had to double it in the stranding to make it show up against the white of the Bulky. Being that it was large yarn on large needles, it knit up quite quickly. But of course no simple hat is aloud to be simple. I had originally tried to make a normal 'shaggy' beret-ish beanie with a two inch rib at the bottom. I mean the very straight forward simple hat type. I hated it, it was not what I wanted. I needed something more fun because my aunt is more fun.
So of course I ripped it all out and started from the beginning, because I knew that she has always been into to different texture I thought that I would play that up. Then this idea of allowing too just have the silk cloud by itself for some areas came to me. I was really happen in the end with how it turned out and have even been thinking of making me one for myself...but of course in pink.

After blocking it became much more beret styled

Once I folded up the brim