This is my new company logo for my knitted and crocheted finished goods. I decided to separate it from the yarn processing and the alpaca business as I knit from fibers other than alpaca. Since my email address is Brit Knits I thought it was only fitting to keep the name. Brit Knits was not available for my url so I added the "the" in front. I have posted a lot of new hats on the hats2 page of the website. Of course I also offer a lot of other finished items, shawls, scarves and clothing. I am really into the lace knitting right now so there are a lot of shawls.


Since I'm getting prepared for a 3-day holiday show at Fort Concho in San Angelo I am busy knitting hats so I have a good selection of sizes and colors. I do make hats in all different fibers but right now I am concentrating on using alpaca. I have made some in my handspun that has been dyed and some in natural colored alpaca. Our boy Donncha gives us such a selection off his fiber as he's shaded from a medium fawn all the way to a soft off-white.

This is one of the hats, obviously, hand dyed fiber then hand spun. After spinning up a single ply I then took some rayon that I dyed in the turquoise and plied it together. It's nice how the rayon sparkles in the fiber. You have the softness of the alpaca paired with the soft shimmer of the rayon, making a fun hat.



I am having a lot of fun designing hats. I have a lot of knitting books and have now found that most of them are simple plain hats made with chunky yarn. First, I don't like knitting with chunky yarn, I think the finer yarns have a much softer look to them. Secondly, I don't like knitting plain old stitches with lots of decreasing.



Consequently I have decided to select nice pattern stitches and choose ones that are easy to decrease with. Cables are one style that is easy to decrease automatically and now I'm researching some rib patterns that will work too. I'm currently working on a hat in the Harley Davidson colors, black and orange. I'll post a pic of it when I get finished.



The other thing I am doing with a lot of these hats is instead of making a pompom to put on top I am knitting up a long tail at the top of the head which I then knot. I am calling this style of hat Brit Knots. Just like a play on words. Here's an example. This is a man's size so it's a little loose on the "mannequin"