Bimtral: On designing for specific properties of a yarn and clever grafting

The Winter issue features a new design from one our favourite hat designers,  Woolly Wormhead.

Bimtral is classic Woolly: flattering and easy to wear, and all sorts of fun to knit.

It’s worked sideways – not just for fun, but to address the properties of the yarn that Woolly chose. The yarn is a wonderful blend of camel and silk, which is soft but not wildly stretchy. So Woolly turned the hat 90 degrees, substituting sideways garter for the usual lower-edge ribbing. But because it’s worked sideways, it requires a graft to finish. But this graft is not your usual – it’s grafted in a very particular manner to create a purl ridge.

Since grafting can be a bit tricky at the best of times, Woolly has written a tutorial on her blog, here.  It turns out that the specific technique required for this hat is actually the easiest of all of the “speciality” grafts – even easier than the standard version, in fact!