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Giveaway: Margeau Chapeau

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Margeau Chapeau book review

Judy is the winner.

Last week I told you about the book full of pretty, classic, but with a bit of luxury worked in hat knitting patterns called Margeau Chapeau. I’m delighted to be able to give away a physical (and autographed, from what I hear!) copy of the book to one lucky (U.S. only, please) winner.

In this book you’ll get a bunch of great hat projects you’ll love to knit for yourself and friends and family. It may just give you all the projects you need for your holiday gift knitting all in one place.

If you’d like a chance to win this book, leave a comment on this post before the end of the day Sunday, July 31. I’d love to hear about your favorite hat that you’ve ever knit, or a hat that you own that you wish you could knit.

One of my favorites is the Eyelet Beret from my colorwork book. It’s so fun and easy in self-striping yarn, and totally cheerful in shape and color. I love it.

Thanks for visiting, commenting and sharing, and good luck!

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Comments

  1. Living in a state with cold winter climate, I love knitting hats for friends and family.

  3. I LOVE making hats and think my favorite one so far is Monte Rosa, a combination of lace and cables in an easy pattern (sorry, I’m not sure how to link to the pattern page on Ravelry!). This looks like a great book to share with my cousin, who I am currently teaching to knit. Thanks for the awesome giveaway!!

  5. I live in NE CT where it gets quite cold in the winter months. I love to wear different hats and I love to knit ( and crochet lol).

  6. I like to knit hats for charity. I am working on one now, although my favorite was a floppy brim hat I made myself in high school…a long time ago!

  8. i am currently trying to teach myself to knit so i haven’t attempted a hat yet but this is the perfect one to try!

  12. Love knitting hats. When I get frustrated with bigger projects not working, I make a hat to boost my self-confidence. My favorite still is my first, I’d never done decreases before or seams and its just beautiful.

  13. I knitted my first hat this winter for my daughter ribbing with sequin yarn. She loved it! Would love to try more challenging patterns like the one on the cover. This book looks awesome. Thank you for the chance to win!

  14. It’s COLD up here where I live, and I fell in love with the hat on the cover!! I’m sure that there are going to be tons of ideas for me to make for friends, family, and charities. Thank you so much for your generous giveaway!!

  17. I have made quite a few hats. My favorite is an Andean earflap hat. Right now I am knitting hats for the Seaman’s Church.

  20. The first hat i knitted. I made it in two shades of purple. It is from Klutz Learn to knit book/kit.

  21. I teach Special Education and have enjoyed teaching many of my students how to knit. Knitting is a lifelong activity that requires art, math, and time to achieve a nice reward-a finished product.

  22. I knitted my first hat when I was 12, as a gift for a friend. It was very simple, knitted flat and with a pom pom. That was back in 1973 when I was living in Colorado. She loved it and really appreciated it for those very frigid winters! It was Navy blue and gold, the colors of our junior high school.

  28. My favorite hat is the earflap hat from Charlotte Schurch’s “Hats On”. I’ve made a dozen of them. I just thumbed through Margeau Chapeaux at my LYS and it was lovely although not in my current hobby budget. I’d love to win!

  31. I created a hat for my daughter once, a floppy brimmed hat… don’t know how I made, didn’t have a pattern but as a teenager she thought it was the best hat ever!

  34. I think that the most fun I had making a hat is the Baa-ble Hat (Ravelry). I like color variations and the topic was a great one for a new wool spinner.

  35. I have not made a hat yet. I usually make shawls and sweaters. I think it’s time to start!

  36. Hats are my favorite thing to knit. My favorite hat that I have knit is a tricolor hat that uses slip stitches to make an interesting colorwork pattern. Would love to win this book and try out some new hat patterns!

  37. I love the purple hat on the cover! Margeau’s patterns are so well written. Her Sunrise wrap is next on my knit list 😉

  38. I love knitting hats. I haven’t come across one that is my favorite yet since it is too hard to choose just one.

  39. My favorite hat that I’ve ever made was just a simple hat for my Dad. I lined it with fleece. He wears is all the time in the winter. He wears it so much, he asked me to make another one for him.

Have you read?

Knit a Leopard Print Shawl and Learn about Yarn Substitution

When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations. 

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind. 

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca. 

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl. 

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions. 

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic). 

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only. 

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns. 

[Photo: Yarnspirations]