That’s what my two-year-old, Jay, sings when we step out on a particularly brisk day. Today, the thermometer read 12 degrees when we were getting ready to go. My new hat kept me warm.


If you’ve been to the Fair Isle February blog, you’ll see that members are producing whole sweaters in a weekend, but I’ve never been one for speed.

I frogged the fair isle part of the hat twice. The first time, I decided that the chart I originally chose was not taking well to crochet’s natural tendency to lean leftward. I rifled through Carol Ventura’s More Tapestry Crochet for a different idea, and found these nice simple blocks.

I frogged it a second time because I had forgotten one of the things I learned about colorwork in my class with Carol–when you’re switching colors–start the new color 1/2 stitch before the color change–that is, in single crochet, dig into the stitch one stitch before the color change with the old color, pull back a loop of old color, then yarn over with the new color and pull through. That way there’s no jog of color from one stitch to the next.

I finished it off with a 2-color rib… I had originally wanted to change color every row on the ribbing, to get the green only in the “valleys,” but that would have meant 2 balls of color for each end of a 6-stitch rib, and that was too fussy for me. I might try that some other time. I love adding ribbing to anything crocheted now that I don’t have to sew it on when it’s done. Robyn Chachula has come up with a great method of working the ribbing right onto the garment–she describes the method in her Summit Hill pattern on crochetme.com.

I’ve gotten permission from Carol to incorporate her chart into a pattern for the hat, so stay tuned. I’ll let you know when I write it all down. I”m hoping to make mitts to match the hat, but for now, I have to get back to work projects–I’m crocheting a sweater with this amazing suri alpaca/merino from Blue Sky.

"Baby, It’s Cold Outside!"