Ysolda Teague is a fine, young British knitwear designer. A lot of knitters really like her Peaks Island Hood. Here’s how it looks on Ysolda, along with a link to the pattern download. I made some modifications, including substituting Rowan Coccoon for Green Mountain Spinnery Mountain Mohair. It proved a good yarn choice. Green Mountain is a 70/30 wool mohair blend. Coccoon cuts the halo effect down a bit, at 80/20 merino/mohair. I decided that the three buttons and (pardon me) lopsidedness of one side being significantly shorter than the other side were not to my liking. So I added sixty rows of seed stitch to the second side. The lengths of the sides are still uneven, but not to the exaggerated degree of the original pattern.
And now a word about the pattern. Confusing. That’s the word. Needlessly confusing. That’s the two words. Because this is a simple pattern once you figure out what’s going on. But without charts and without stitch by stitch instructions for the shells at the beginning and end, and less so for the ear-height stitch adjustments, everything but the miles and miles of seed stitch leaves too much to the imagination. Of course, some knitters are way better in the imagination department than I am. There’s lots of help from the good knitters on Ravelry, though, including in the Ysolda group.
This knit is for me. My gray-headed 58 years are going to look more babushka than hoody, but it still will feel quite yummy and be very warm. I’ve decided to feed my inner selfish knitter on this one.
such a beautiful project
x
@Rowe…thanks so much!
Hi Noreen, hoping you’re still active on this site. I’m hoping for some help on the peak island hood and haven’t gotten a response set back from Ysolda’s site.
@Stephanie…I am definitely still active on my blog. But I knit Peak’s Island 12 years ago and don’t even own the pattern anymore. I have notes on my Ravelry project page about the difficulties I had with this pattern. But it’s long on frustration and short on solutions: https://www.ravelry.com/projects/noreen1009/peaks-island-hood Here’s a link to the 1500 or so Ravelry projects on this pattern, filtered for only the ones other Ravelers marked as “helpful:” https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/peaks-island-hood/people?view=cards&search=&view=cards&helpful=1 Maybe if you go through those project notes you’ll get help with whatever particular problem you’re having with it. This might be the most relied on set of knitters’ notes on Rav: https://www.ravelry.com/projects/mcmena/peaks-island-hood
Thank you so much! Yes I started it in 2012 but ending up having a baby and hadn’t finished it. Years later picking it back up had to redo it as my tension changed. Just finished the scallops at the beginning but couldn’t get the seed stitch to match up on the final middle stitches from the scallop. I’ll look through those Ravelry links. Much appreciated!