I first saw the Shwook hat on Lori's Instagram feed, she had knit it for her upcoming trip to Shetland.  The Shwook Hat is a free pattern by Hazel Tindall designed for the 2014 Shetland Wool Week that will be going on October 4-12.  Lori's hat is beautiful and it inspired me to cast on for my own Shwook hat.  I could work on my Shetland hat while Lori and a few of my friends, Paula, Kathy and Susan, were on the Shetland Islands on a knitting retreat with the wonderful and talented Gudrun Johnston and Mary Jane Mucklestone.

I have knit a few color work pieces, including the Tolt Hat,  but not a true Fair Isle.  I felt comfortable with the process and technique since taking Mary Jane's Fair Isle class at VK Live and then again here at Tolt.  I reviewed the pattern and was ready to look for yarn.  We had just changed our Jamieson's Shetland display at the shop and I had such a fun time deciding on what colors to use.  I opened up Mary Jane's 200 Fair Isle Motifs book for color combination ideas and finally decided on my 5 colors, Mermaid, Surf, Flax and Burnt Umber from Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift and Muskat from Elemental Affects.  To make it easier on  myself I taped little snips of yarn to my chart for easy reference.

While on vacation I finished my hat.  It was a simple and fun pattern and like a good book, hard to put down-- I kept wanting to get to the next row of my chart to see the pattern unfold!

I won't be at Shetland Wool week this year but I will definitely be wearing my Shwook this October!

* Tolt will be offering a Fair Isle class on Sept 23 and 30th.