It’s April, so it’s time for the fourth pattern installment in my Canadian Art Deco Knits ebook. This month the inspiration came to me via a family member. My aunt Viv lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, and sent me some pictures she’d taken of the fabulous Art Deco bridge. I loved it!
The Albert Street Bridge was built as part of a large works project during the Great Depression. Each terracotta baluster seems to have a different colour scheme. As you may have guessed, the inspiration for the design came from Egypt with lotus flowers & papyrus plants. King Tut’s tomb was discovered in 1922 and there are many Art Deco buildings with an Egyptian flair.
(c) Sandra Cohen-Rose and Colin Rose
This beautiful bridge had me thinking about colourwork. Nothing quite compares to Shetland yarn for the type of hat I had in mind I visited my friend Debbie (aka Sheeps Ahoy). She’s got a whole wall full of every colour of Shetland wool imaginable. We played with Jamieson & Smith 2 ply jumper weight and ended up with eight balls that seemed to work together. It took me a few swatches and a failed hat attempt to arrive at the final design, but I had fun the whole way through.
I’ve got some tips for making the knitting of this hat as fun and satisfying as possible:
1) Do a gauge swatch in the round. Mine was two pattern repeats around.
2) To avoid hours of darning in ends, either weave them in as you go or spit splice the colours as they’re needed to avoid darning in any ends.
3) To give the colourwork section the same thickness and gauge throughout, use two strands of the same colour (one from each end of the ball) on single colour rows. I alternated every 3 stitches.
You can get the individual Albert Street Tam pattern on Ravelry for $5 (USD). 
The Canadian Art Deco Knits e-book is $25 (USD) and will include 12 different patterns by the end of 2015.
Beautiful hat!! Great interpretation of a motif.