Brain Coral

I was thrilled when Tanis Gray emailed me two months ago, and told me that my Vine and Leaf Beret would be on the cover of the fall Vogue Knitting.  And now that I've seen the cover, I'm delighted-- I couldn't ask for a better swan song (seeing that, unless Soho Publishing changes their designer contract terms, this will be my last VK- published pattern).  

I was actually asked by Tanis to submit ideas for hat patterns for this issue, and since my favorite part of creating hat patterns is working out the crown decreases so they flow from the stitch pattern, I immediately went to my stitch dictionaries and searched for patterns that I thought would adapt nicely to decreasing rapidly-- usually for the flat part of a beret, the decreases work out to approximately 7 or 8 stitches decreased in every round (or something equivalent, i.e. twice as many stitches decreased every other round).  Once again, one of my Japanese stitch dictionaries provided the inspiration; when I saw the stitch pattern I adapted for the Vine & Leaf Beret, I immediately thought of rapidly decreasing every other rep down to a single stitch, and then following with the other reps.  This is another fun knit, and quick!  I highly recommend it.

(If it was up to me, I probably wouldn't have chosen this yarn color.  Having said that, I do like the finished product-- but given the rosy color, the groovy texture, and the fact that it sits on your head, I DEFINITELY would have named this pattern "Brain Coral".)