I have already waxed lyrical about my love of the dip stitch designs in Hunter Hammersen’s book, Firmament. They really are so compelling that I found both my Constellate and Ecliptic hats very hard to put down. But now that I’ve finished my Ecliptic hat I want to swoon over the crown shaping in a bit more detail…

Isn’t that just a thing of beauty? The way that the stitches sit like spokes of a wheel, all perfectly converging. All of the hats in Firmament have good crowns, but I just haven’t been able to stop looking at this crown since I pulled the yarn through the last few stitches the other day.

The crown shaping on Constellate was good too! It’s a real art to get the crown shaping on a hat just right. I remember knitting a cabled hat as a fairly new knitter and being really disappointed that the crown was such a mess. I choose my patterns more carefully these days.

Great crown shaping should be admired and enjoyed. Although I do love a good pom pom… but not when the crown is this good!

I have a beautiful skein of Skein Queen Selkino in the Honeycreeper colourway that I think is destined to become an Ephemeris hat. The only question is, which of these hats will be my favourite in terms of crown shaping? So far Ecliptic is in the lead…

If you fancy some dip stitch action, with added beautiful crown shaping, we have copies of Firmament available in the online shop for £18.50. The book is packed with information on dip stitches, reading charts, how to convert the hat patterns to cowls and much more.

I’ve been enjoying a break between knitting for work projects, and as well as finishing my Ecliptic hat, I’ve also made huge progress on my Ola Yoke cardigan, so I hope to be back next week to tell you all about that. The image above shows where I’ve worked a crochet reinforcement ready to cut open the steek. I’m so excited to see how this looks when it’s done. I think it’s going to be my go-to cardi this winter. The only problem now is how to decide what to knit next! There are so many options… I’m looking for good crown shaping, that’s for sure!