made: knit headband

When I met Tanya from A Yarn Loving Mama at Unravel a couple of weeks ago, I was in awe of her fabulous knit headband. She made it herself (ofcourse) from hand spun yarn, and I just thought it was gorgeous!

A quick look through her blog upon my return later, and I found the pattern she used. I thought it was a little out of my league, since I can technically knit but nothing too fancy, so I kept browsing. And then I found this lovely pattern, written by Tanya herself! It involved knitting cables. I had never done that before, but since the pattern only had 6 rows to repeat and it didn’t really look all that difficult, I decided to teach myself how to knit cables! (because, really, that is the only thing to do when you’re home feeling a bit bleh and just don’t know what else to do; you knit!)

The surprising thing? It’s really easy! :)

To knit this I used two 5mm wooden dpns (double pointed needles), a cable needle (you can use an extra dpn for this too if you don’t have one) and a small amount of yarn. I used Sarah’s hand spun she gifted me, and still have about half of the yarn left.

Once you get the hang of knitting the cable row, it really goes quite fast. There are only 20 stitches on your needles, so even the most slow knitters can finish this project in a day (like me!). It took me two afternoons to knit this up, and I simply cannot stop touching it! I’m still amazed at how knit cables work; they look so intricate, yet are so so simple to make. They create a very interesting fabric and when I look closely, I STILL can’t figure out how it works ;)

I think I made my headband with 18 or 20 pattern repeats, before I cast off and sewed the sides together. I don’t know if I have a big or a small head, but it fits me :)

Perfect headband for a hippie like me.

xo,
wink