Naughty Naughty!

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A while ago I was browsing through my knitting pages on Facebook and I came across a hat.  It was so pretty… fair isle knitted with these cute reindeer on it!  The girl who had made the hat had casually asked us in the group if we thought the “stars” in the background were “too much” … and I did not even SEE it until I looked at the comments for the hat.  The deer, they are making a Bambi!

I knew instantly I had to make this hat!  For that rugged, bearded, brawny woodsman of a man in my life… er, if I had one haha.  I’m not going to lie, I would totally make this hat for myself and rock it!  However, I have two children under the age of 10 and I think the other moms might think their childish behavior is a result of my parenting style (giggles).

So I made this hat for my friend Andrew, of course, after carefully removing the “male” antlers from the female deer in the pattern.

Original chart showing the female deer with antlers
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Here is how I made the female deer less “male”
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The basic chart pattern is from Anne Rutten and is called the Fornicating Deer Chart (click the link to get the chart).  I made the hat with the chart as follows:

For this hat I used Wool-Ease Solids yarn in Oxford Grey for the main color, and Vicki Howell’s Sheep(ish) yarn in white-ish for the contrast color.

Using  size 2 (2.75mm) circular needles for the ribbing, and size 6 (4.0mm) circulars and DPN’s (double pointed needles) for the remainder of the hat.

CO 96 sts (main color, smaller needles)

work 1.5″ 2×2 ribbing

K one row, change to larger needles

K 33 rows of the chart pattern via fair isle (stranded knitting) technique (towards the end I added in some intermittent stars to break up my long strands, you can do this too if you like though it’s not necessary)

Begin decreasing by:

K6, K2Tog knit any extra stitches left before marker at end of round.
Knit next row all the way around.
K5, K2Tog
Knit next row all the way around

Continue to decrease in this manner until last row is K2tog all the way around. When left with approximately 8 stitches on needle, run yarn through stitches and pull through center opening

Sew in your loose ends

Here is a link to help you understand Fair Isle knitting if  you are new to it like I was.  Below you can see how I held my two strands of yarn and only picked up the color I needed for each stich, below that you can see how the other yarn will become “stranded” behind the knitted work (as seen from the backside of your work).  

© positivelylace

© positivelylace

This hat was a blast to knit, and I’m really happy that my friend liked it.  I hope you will give this hat a try as well!  Enjoy!