Thinking about hats and stripes

I've just got back from holiday in Portugal, the weather was lovely and the beach was a minute away! I took my sketchbook with me, and this month's copy of Vogue and was hoping for a bit of inspiration.

According to Vogue this summer is all about colour blocks, breton stripes and pale frilly things. I am quite looking forward to sewing some colour block shirts. I don't tend to wear stripes so had originally dissmissed these out of hand, but then I thought of knitting a stripped beach shawl. I imagine it in broad blue and white stripes in mercarised cotton, the blue stripes are plain but the white stripes could be lacy. Then I thought about knitting it as a hat...!

I love sunhats and recently found a pattern for a knitted sunhat called Windandsea from Kristi Porter's Knitting in the Sun. I've resized the pattern from double knit to 4 ply and have dug out a ball of Twilley's flaxen. The hat uses a decrease at eight points in the circumference every other row and I was worried that I've get bored so I've also added in a lily of the valley motif from Nancy Bush's Knitted Lace of Estonia: Techniques and Traditions.  So far it looks a little like this:

 

I'm in two minds about how I feel about the flaxen, At the moment it has a lot of long fibres that are a bit straw-like, but I'm hoping it will wash and block well. I'll keep you updated.

I'm also imagining various incarnations of stripey sunhats, occasionally straying towards handbags and wishing I knew a bit more about how to design lace knitting. So I'm off to do some more research and more sketching, and probably a bit of swatching as well.

TTFN