Steven’s Creek

Inspiration comes from many different places. Sometimes I think of an entire finished piece and I know how I want it to look; sometimes I start with a yarn and think about what I want it to be; other times I am playing with a stitch pattern or texture and I consider what finished item could best incorporate the patterning. This was the case with the Steven’s Creek hat.

For a little while now, I’ve been playing with stitch patterns in my swatches that go over and under each other diagonally, or that appear to. One of them, in stranded colorwork, eventually became the Steven’s Creek hat.

Steven’s Creek is named after a walking and biking trail that makes its way quite near my house. It’s a trail that pops up seemingly out of nowhere in the middle of a densely-packed suburb. Once you enter, all sense of being surrounded by houses and highways disappears; everwhere you look, greenery overhangs the trail and the creek it’s named for.

It’s not a difficult trail, but it is an intriguing one, and one whose aspect changes rapidly. I think those attributes also perfectly describe this hat. The colorwork section isn’t huge, and it’s on a manageable number of stitches. It can even be worked inside-out if you’re worried about the tension of your floats being too tight. But it’s an interesting pattern to knit and one that keeps changing a bit at a time.

Steven’s Creek was published this month in The Knitting Guild Association’s Cast On magazine, which is available as an electronic download to members of TKGA. If you’re not yet a member, you might want to consider becoming one, as the association provides a great deal of technical information and resources to its members, in addition to the twice-yearly magazine, for the $25 per year membership fee. (I’m not affiliated with TKGA and don’t make any cut from those links; they are provided only for your convenience.)