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I finished a pair of hats with nalbinding for Baron Zhigmun’ and Baroness Aleyd of my home barony of Tir Tsgithr. Our Sonoran desert nights have become rather cold and we have a big camping event coming up next week.

Our baronial colors are blue and yellow. My husband gave me much grief for working in Swedish national colors. The striped hat is for the baron, the more sedate hat is for the baroness. I was tempted to add a propeller to the top of His Excellency’s hat, which would have been awesome.

Both are in a Finnish turning stitch (2+2+2 type, my all time favorite). The striped one is turned inside out. Both are with a single ply wool that is about a worsted weight. The edging on Her Excellency’s hat is that Skrydstrup-inspired wrapped nalbinding in a Mammen stitch. I have a post up on LiveJournal from last spring about that technique (here). I’ll have more to post on the documentation side of things once all my interlibrary loan materials come in.

Back to the hats.  Stripes are fun, but I find that where the colors come together is often cleaner on one side of the nalbinding than the other (depending on the stitch). It comes down to how the yarns lie across each other on those connection stitches. Another issue with stripes is how to end them. This hat was started at the top.

 I went for the simplest possible edge: half the bottom of the hat is yellow and half is blue. I could have continued the yellow further along with tinier stitches, but I never like how that looks where there is a strong contrast in the colors. My favorite way to deal with this is to edge the whole thing in a third color.

I am back on hat kick now that fall is upon us. This time last year, I was feverishly nalbinding all the Christmas presents for the family in Finland. Now I am finally getting around to more hats for friends, and I hope to also post some pictures of as I finish them.