I've been wanting to knit the Selbu Modern Beret, a free pattern available on Ravelry, for several months and now that cool weather has finally arrived, it was time to do so.


©2008 Kelbourne Woolens.

First I needed to decide on the yarn.  The pattern called for fingering-weight yarn also known as a 4-ply yarn.  I searched my stash on Ravelry:


and found that I had a couple of beautiful colours in Jaeger Matchmaker 4-ply. I decided I would use those for the hat.  I then swatched the two colours to see which I should use for the background colour and which for the design.


George and I both decided we liked the raspberry as background with the aqua as design better (the top half of the swatch).

Since I'm unemployed with plenty of time, it took me only 4 days to knit the hat.  I started on Sept 29th and finished Oct 2nd.  I then washed and blocked the hat on a 10" plate.  Here's a picture of the top stretched over the plate:


And here's a picture of the other side off the plate:


Through the brim opening you can see the stranded yarns.

I wore the beret to the October 5th meeting of the Seattle Knitters Guild last night, and got lots of compliments on the design and the colours I chose for it.  Now the beret will go into my stash of possible holiday gifts as it's just a little big for my tiny 20-1/2" head (the average head is 22" in circumference).  I might get George to take a picture of me wearing it and post that later.