Chameleon Cap


This is Nicky Epstein’s Chameleon. It’s available through her website.  It’s also been published in Nicky’s excellent The Knit Hat Book, in the 1997 Winter edition of Knitter’s Magazine and in Donna Kooler’s Encyclopedia of Knitting. Chameleon gets around, I guess.

All this coverage is well deserved. Chameleon is a simple hat. It can be knit flat or in the round. The stitch pattern is easy to learn and easy to quickly see mistakes if you happen to fall asleep at the switch. But it’s lively enough to hold your interest.

Chameleon’s brim can be folded back.You can roll the brim and it holds the roll nicely.You can add a nice sturdy tassle or pom-pom, bend the tip as you see fit, and wear it with no fold or brim. It’s even cute worn Robin Hood style, with a folded cuff that is narrow at one end and wide on the other.

Chameleon is worked here in Berroco’s Comfort, a 50% nylon, 50% acrylic easy-care blend that is soft as can be. This was the first time I knit with it and it’s definitely on my list for using again. Good stuff. I’ve knit this hat at least half a dozen times.Try it in Noro Kureyon for a stunning stylish look. Great pattern.

Rose Reticule

mom_bagKnitting holds on to its old words.  Ganseys, gurnseys, wristers, gauntlets, gussets, steeks and, in this case, reticule.  Of course, then there are “Magic Loops” and “frogging” and “tinking”  and “UFOs” but hold that thought for now.  This is Nicky Epstein’s “Rose Reticule” pattern from the Winter, 1994 Knitters Magazine.  I knit it soon after it was published.  Fifteen years ago.  But I remember the project more clearly than I remember some non-knitting events in my recent past.  It’s supposed to have beads knit in around the rose.  I could not make those beads behave.  I still can’t make beads behave the way many other knitters can.  My mom lined this small purse in a beautiful dark cloth with small roses printed on the fabric.  She thought she was finishing it for me to give to someone else and was very pleased to receive it that year for Christmas.  The yarn is an elasticized ribbon sold by Tiber.  Fifteen years ago it was a real stretch to knit this in exactly the expensive  yarn Epstein planned for it.  But it was one of those patterns where substituting would not have worked well.