Sedona Fair Isle Hat Pattern and Chart

Corrected Sedona Hat Chart

Note: A very generous knitter is fixing the chart so it shows grid lines.  I’ll replace it as soon as she send it to me. See comments.  Some day I’ll be friends with Excel!  Thank you, Anne!

This past Christmas, my husband, our two dogs and myself drove to California to see our son and his family in our ‘new to us’ RV.   We planned on taking six days to get there from Michigan, and it was a good thing.  We ended up stopping almost every two to three hours for our four-legged children.

Jim drove the entire way, and I sat in my comfortable seat and knit.  We both thought the landscape of New Mexican and Arizona was breathtaking.  Especially once we started to go south on Rt. 17 in Flagstaff, the scenery really inspired me.

In Sedona, the mountains were covered with grasses, cacti, vines and short evergreen shrubbery.  I took pictures as we flew by, but it was what was in my memory that I wrote down.  The colors were surprising; in the middle of winter, most hillsides were brown and dry.  But in Sedona, the shades of greens, grays, and teals took my breath away.

As soon as we got to California, I printed out some graph paper and designed these stylized desert plants and cacti.  We drove up to Santa Cruz to see my aunt and she took me to a knitting shop there so I could search for yarn.  The selection of fingering weight yarns were mostly cottons and baste fibers, but I wanted wool.  There was some Baby Ull, not in a huge range of colors, but enough to get me started.  Since we got home, I ordered 26 different shades of green, yellow and teal of Jamieson DK, deciding I wanted the work to go a little faster.

The charts are in a printable PDF file; click on the link near the upper left of this page; the pattern repeat is 20 stitches.  Please print out the chart and tape the upper chart on to the lower chart.

To knit the hat, you can follow my simple directions or use any slouchy hat pattern, casting on enough stitches to fit your head but in multiples of twenty.  I knit 1.5 inches of 2X2 ribbing with two different colors, and then began the chart.  We have huge heads in our family and a lot of hair, so I started with 160 stitches.  I know, giant.  Another nice hat has 140 stitches cast on and then increase to 160.  A hat I love is Fair Isle Hat by Shelia Joynes.  Her basic pattern would work with any fair isle chart.  It is a lovely hat to knit.

Pattern

Yarn

Baby Ull, Six shades of greens, gray, and tan for the background.

Needles

US3 16″ Circular

5 dbl points US 3

Stitch markers

Tapestry needle

Cast on 160 stitches, join in the round, being careful not to twist.  Place marker at join.

Knit 1.5 ” of 2×2 ribbing using two contrasting yarns.

Using tan main color, knit one row, placing marker every 20 stitches.

Begin chart at bottom right.  I used the two handed method of stranding unless we were driving on bad roads.  Be sure not to get your tension too tight.

Knit through to top of upper chart; begin decreasing row in between saguara cacti.

Knit ten, knit two together.

Knit the next row.

Repeat decrease row every other row, decreasing by knitting two together in the center of each section of pattern.

When you are left with about five stitches on each of four double points, cut yarn leaving a ten inch tail, thread with tapestry needle, thread stitches on yarn, pull snug, tie and cut yarn, weaving in end.

My hat needed a rigorous blocking due to my uneven tension; I think driving and knitting fair isle may have been ambitious!

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