When I went to TNNA last june, I had the pleasure of meeting Woolly Wormhead, and got to spend some time chatting with her, and even knitting with her. Of course she was knitting a hat at the time (out of some amazing Malabrigo yarn we received at the designer’s dinner). One of the things we talked about was that hats is a handy, portable project that can be used to explore a variety of techniques and textures. Just like fingerless mittens. Or shawls. Woolly has designed lots and lots and lots of hats, in just about any shape imaginable, knit in any which direction. And I’m sure she’ll come up with even more hats to dazzle us in the future.
During the summer, she published Bambeanies – a collection of 20 hats for children. They all come in a number of different sizes, and some even work well for adults. She kindly sent me a copy at the beginning of September, and it is wonderful. Below, Woolly talks a bit more about the book, hats and design in general.
How did you get started on designing hats?
Hats have always been a fascination for me – I used to wear felted wool berets as a kid to school even though they weren’t part of the uniform (and despite being bullied for wearing them!) I never really knitted Hats at that age though, even though I was knitting. It wasn’t until a number of years later, once I’d finished my Fine Art Textiles degree that I began to experiment, sculpturally, with Hats. And all kinds of Hats, too, at that time.
I’ve always seen Hats as a playground, and I guess it was natural progression to start documenting what I did with the Hats, which in turn led to pattern writing and self publishing.
Why a book on hats for children, specifically?
Well, I figured that having the perfect model right under my feet, so why not?! I love designing Hats for Aran, and I love photographing him, so it seemed like the ideal thing to do. It didn’t though turn out to be as straightforward as I’d originally thought – getting co-operative female models proved a bit of a challenge 😉
We’ve talked a bit about different constructions, and you seem to have hats knit in just about any direction. What are your considerations when determining the direction a new design should be knit in?
What shape I’m trying to achieve, and how the crown should look, are the determining factors in construction and direction of knitting. Sometimes it’s the direction of a stitch pattern which is key, especially if sideways knitting is considered, as a stitch pattern such as cables take on quite different properties when you turn them on their side.
And sometimes I really fancy a change, so I’ll go ahead and deliberately work something that’s knitted in a different direction. Change is good, creatively.
What are the first steps in your design process? Do you start with a yarn and figure out what kind of hat it might like to be? Or do you start with a hat-idea and hunt for the yarn?
A bit of both, I think. Sometimes the yarn knows exactly what it wants to be, and sometimes I’ll be hunting through my stash looking for a yarn that has exactly the qualities that the design needs. I have come to learn which kinds of yarns I like working with, and don’t often stray outside of that realm (hence the Woolly in my name!)
One of my favourite hats from Bambeanies is the Rocketeer, and I had in fact knit one within a day of getting a copy of your book. Can you tell me more about the Rocketeer, and why you designed that hat?
I was intrigued by the sideways construction, and also felt it scaled well to an adult size hat.
Rocketeer is one of my favourites from the book, too. I had seen someone, an adult, wearing a black pixie Hat during one winter, and it reminded me that pixie Hats can be fun, and that I hadn’t made any for ages. Ideas started developing in my head, and knew the one I wanted design was to be knit sideways, as I enjoy the challenge of working with the short rows to shape the crown. I knew it needed to be a pretty chunky yarn, to give it structure, and that it needed some great colours to enhance it’s playfullness. Rocketeer doesn’t bear any resemblance to the one I saw, except for the pixie point, but it serves as a reminder of how randomly some design ideas start!
And finally….. what’s next?
I have a couple of book ideas developing, but right now, a break is needed! I’m attempting to restructure how I work, so I can have better quality time with my family, and keep within a reasonable set of working hours (wish me luck with that one 
One book that is in progress is a collection of designs, some old, some new, all photographed around a prominent sculpture all about time (it’s actually called ‘The Time Machine’). I have taken many photos of my Hats within this great piece of work, and I thought it would be an interesting project to use this background, the setting, as a theme for the book. But that will be a slow project, I’m in no hurry. And as it is about time itself, it needs time to develop.
Woolly Wormhead has generously offered a PDF copy of Bambeanies to a lucky reader. If you would like to win, please leave a comment on this post about your favourite knit hat by midnight Oct 10, 2011. I will select a winner using the almighty random number generator.
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