Foggy Cove Tam
I've been happily knitting away on a collection of classic tams in different colorways! What a fun, low-stress way to explore how colors interact.
Tams are, at their simplest, tall beanies that are blocked to the flat shape we are so familiar with. Mary Rowe's book Knitting Tams will teach you everything you need to know about knitting and designing tams—sadly out of print, but I expect that you can find a copy on some yarn shop shelf somewhere (makes a good excuse for LYS visiting, doesn't it?).
I use an 11-inch dinner plate turned upside down as my blocking form. Once the tam is stretched over the plate, I balance it on a bowl (this looks a bit like a UFO or one of the dancing mushrooms in Fantasia):
I don't do anything special to shape the band; I neaten it while the tam is on the blocking form by tugging downward. Once freed from the plate, the band looks like I spent a lot of effort making a sharp turn:
This tam is one a series I'm developing to teach Fair Isle color use. I'll be teaching this class for the first time at Churchmouse Yarns & Teas on Bainbridge Island, Washington (near Seattle), on April 1. I choose the colors but you choose how to arrange them!
And if you want to choose your own colors, I'm teaching the 2-day color class at Churchmouse as well on April 2 & 3. It looks like this will be the only time I'm teaching this in the Pacific NW this year, by the way.
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