Love in a Cold Climate

Love in a Cold Climate Knitted Headwear by Kate Heppell

Project Overview

Love in a Cold Climate is an advanced knitting pattern for a colorful headwear piece designed by Kate Heppell. This downloadable PDF pattern creates a vibrant, rainbow-striped hat that showcases colorwork knitting techniques using traditional Shetland wool. The finished piece measures between 43 to 52 centimeters in circumference with a height of 11 centimeters, offering four size options to suit different head sizes.

What Is Being Made

This pattern produces a knitted hat featuring a striking colorwork design. The headwear combines a neutral grey base with seven contrasting colors—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple—arranged in a repeating pattern. The design creates a cheerful, multicolored stripe effect that transitions through the rainbow spectrum, making it an eye-catching accessory perfect for cold weather wear.

Knitting Techniques Used

The Love in a Cold Climate pattern employs several key knitting techniques suitable for advanced crafters:

• Colorwork knitting: The pattern utilizes chart-based colorwork, requiring knitters to work with multiple yarn colors simultaneously while following a visual chart guide
• Stranded colorwork: Colors are changed every two rows, creating horizontal stripes while maintaining tension across color changes
• Circular knitting: The piece is worked in the round using double-pointed needles, eliminating the need for seaming
• Ribbed edging: Both the cast-on and cast-off edges feature knit-purl ribbing for a finished, elastic appearance
• Blocking and finishing: The completed hat requires washing and blocking to set the colorwork and achieve proper measurements

Stitches Used

The pattern employs fundamental knitting stitches executed in colorwork:

• Knit stitch (K): The primary stitch used throughout the stockinette stitch colorwork sections
• Purl stitch (P): Used in the ribbed edging sections to create textured borders
• Stockinette stitch (St st): The main fabric structure, created by knitting on right-side rows and purling on wrong-side rows (or knitting all rounds when working circularly)
• Ribbing (K2, P2): A two-by-two knit-purl combination that creates the elastic, fitted edges at the cast-on and cast-off

Materials and Yarn Specifications

Love in a Cold Climate is worked in Jamieson & Smith 2-ply jumper weight yarn, a premium Shetland wool option. The yarn composition is 100% Shetland wool with a yardage of 105 meters per 25-gram ball. Despite being labeled jumper weight, this yarn is a true 4-ply construction, providing excellent stitch definition for colorwork.

The color requirements are:

• Grey (shade 203): 2 balls for the main base and contrast color
• Red (shade 93): 1 ball
• Orange (shade 91): 1 ball
• Yellow (shade 23): 1 ball
• Green (shade 47): 1 ball
• Blue (shade 18): 1 ball
• Purple (shade 20): 1 ball

Note: The pattern suggests that knitters may use leftover yarn from the Sunny Later pattern to complete this project, making it an economical choice for those who have previously worked that design.

Needles and Tension

The pattern calls for 3.25mm double-pointed needles (DPNs) to work the hat in the round. The required tension is 24 stitches by 30 rows equals 10 centimeters when measured over stockinette stitch colorwork. Achieving proper tension is essential for this advanced pattern, as it directly affects the finished circumference and overall fit of the headwear.

Size Options and Finished Measurements

Love in a Cold Climate is offered in four sizes with the following finished circumferences: 43 centimeters, 46 centimeters, 49 centimeters, and 52 centime