Saint Padraig

Last winter, Erica Owens and I spent many a frantic night test knitting, photographing, reknitting, revising, and rewriting what has turned out to be one of MayBea Crafted's more popular patterns on Ravelry.  Saint Padraig is the perfect knit for someone who is itching to try two color knitting, but has a little bit of fear standing in their way.

The hat starts out with a contrast cast on, and moves into simple ribbing that will feel familiar to anyone who's knit a hat before.  Easy.  Peasy.  After switching to a larger needle you head to the chart, only to learn that you're only adding a contrast stripe.  Totally doable.  Before you know it, you'll be knitting one stitch of the main color and one of the contrast. . .and just when you're ready to let your brain rest, the chart adds a little bit of rest in it for you.  By the time you get to the shamrocks?  You're ready for them.  They move quickly and have easy to memorize repeats.  Your confidence is soaring by the time you hit the crown, and the quick decreases have you finishing a hat before you know it!

We have one customer who recently wrote that she's casting on number four in the past ten days.  Four hats in ten days?  Yup.  And she says she's not ready to stop anytime soon, St. Patrick's Day is a few weeks away and she's hoping to have a hat for everyone in the family in a rainbow of greens in time for the special day.  She's unstoppable.

Honestly, that would be enough to love the pattern.  A quick, easy entry into fair isle knitting, with fantastic results.  Oh, did I mention that it's sized for babies through adults?  It is.  A size for everyone.  But we didn't want to stop there. . .

This weekend Erica spent some time adding what we'd always hoped we could add to the pattern, but somehow hadn't found the time to add.  A cowl.

How adorable is this?  You can show your Irish pride without getting hat head!  We think the addition of the cowl makes this an even better value at $6, and once you try your hand at knitting with two colors, a whole new world opens up to you.

If you've already purchased the pattern, check your Ravelry library for the update.

If you haven't bought it yet?  What are you waiting for?

Here's a link to help you out.  We;ll be looking for your projects on Ravelry and Instagram.  Tag us with #saintpadraig or #maybeacrafted so that everyone can find you!