Sometimes you need a warm-up project. Carol Feller’s Arcade Cap will warm up you up for knitting the other projects in MDK Field Guide No. 14: Refresh.
It will also literally warm you up. The Arcade Cap is the perfect Spring topper, a touch of style and coziness for cool nights and all manner of hair days. It comes in four sizes, to accommodate differences in heads and hair.
How long does this little knitting snack take to make? We asked Francie Owens, who knit seven of them for us, and her answer is: five hours.
So, it’s official: The Arcade Cap is a perfect quick knit for spontaneous gift-giving, or for those times in life when you’re not ready to commit to a longer stretch of knitting.
The Arcade Cap is also a great project for taking Carol’s fascinating Nua Sport yarn out for a test drive. The two larger sizes take two skeins of Nua Sport, and the two smaller sizes take a single skein.
The Arcade Cap deploys traveling ribs—columns that slant but don’t cross over each other— to form its concentric arches. You’ll get to practice your cable technique, in the least complicated way. It’s also a great pattern to learn how to follow a cable chart, although the instructions are also written out, line by line, for those who prefer that method.
Even experienced cable knitters may be intrigued by the top of the arches: How does Carol do that?
Well, Carol made a little video to show us exactly how she does that.
It’s pretty darn clever.
How very clever!
I have the Field Guide. I have the yarn. Now I have the know how. Thank you for this video. I have already saved it. I might just put aside the Salvage Heart Cardigan for 5 hours.
Very helpful!
The cleverness of this design leaped out of the page at me! Can’t wait to try it!
I chose the arcade hat as my first project for the field guide. Now I am working on the vest. Interesting approach to cable in both patterns.
This is a great hat. I actually want to knit it but I’m so bad at knitting in the round–dang those twisted stitches! I feel like I need to do about 50 cowls in straight garter and then I can move on! :-p
I just ran across your comment, and wondering if you mean twisting in the original stitches? Or twisting of the cast on row when you join it for knitting in the round. Neither one is difficult to address, and well worth the investigating. Especially if it’s creating a barrier to you knitting that hat.
When I go to join in the round. No matter how careful I am, I always twist the stitches!
I’m confused. I can see how Carol is making the decreases for her closed cable, but isn’t that changing the total stitch count for the row? Perhaps that’s intentional for the cap shaping, but if one wanted to do this technique on a flat piece — a blanket or the front of a sweater — wouldn’t it be necessary somehow to replace those decreased stitches?
I think that the decreases are part of the hat’s shaping. It’s use a few stitches so it would be very subtle and I’m guessing that she has more dramatic decreases at the very top.
If you are doing a flat piece then absolutely you would need to compensate. If I had to do it, I would hide the increases in the purls between the knit stitches of the arches. A couple of pfb and you would pretty neatly regain the lost stitches.
I think this could be used for some sweater waist shaping.
Thanks for the tutorial. It looks like a good challenge!
Ooh, good! Just got my Refresh Book in the mail yesterday. Now to mull over the best color for me.
This is amazing and beautiful to watch