August 10, 2015

The Great Totoro Wave

After the last totoro fair isle hat, I still had more yarn, and my mom had said she wanted one too. She didn't have any specification on what she wanted on it, so I decided to try out the Totoro wave pattern I had mocked up.

I made this pattern a tiny bit taller than the last one, since I feel like maybe I should have more design and less edge on these hats. As with most things the more you make, the better they get.

With these large images of the Mount Fuji and this one with the wave, I wonder if the scene gets lost since it wraps around and you cannot see the whole design at once. Like maybe someone behind you will wonder why there is a big blue triangle on that person's hat... I guess that is why repeating motifs are more common in fair isle, since the design is the same from any angle.

While working on this one I went a lot faster than last time, mainly because I was itching to move on from hats into my next plushie idea. Day one, I spent about 4 hours working and got halfway through the design.

I finished the rest of the design in another two three hours or so. At that point I needed to start decreasing around. In the last few I have carried the white along to make stars in the sky, but for this one I needed to keep it to finish off the crest of the wave. If I had tried to include it in the flat part of the design it would have been way too deep of a hat.

I just eyeballed where I felt I should have the white crest start and stop to get that curved look over the next three rows of my decrease rounds. After that I stopped with the white altogether and just did the rest of the closing off in gray.


After hiding the ends, I asked if she would like a pom on the top. I don't have an opinion on them one way or the other, but she thought she would like one. I decided to go with the white and blue colors to maybe make it look like a splash of water, not sure the effect is really there, but it looks cute.


Difficulty, as with all of these hats, is Intermediate in my opinion.
Time to complete: 10 hours

Previous in the set:
Three Totoros & Mt. Fuji
Nighttime Hooting Totoros
Winter Forest Totoros