Learning How to Knit a Beanie
Reading Time: 5 minutes
by Christine Heinrichs
Get ready for wool week by learning to knit a beanie with color-strands to wear while attending the conference.
I don’t remember how I heard about it, but somehow Shetland Wool Week showed up for me in 2024. It’s held at the end of September through the beginning of October each year. In 2025, it’s September 28 through October 4.
Maybe it was when I was researching Floating Offshore Wind projects. The only functioning floating offshore wind project, Hywind, is offshore from Aberdeen, Scotland, between the mainland and the islands. It’s an example of what’s proposed off the U.S. West Coast, due west of where I live in Cambria, on California’s Central Coast. Those projects are currently paused.
My wanderlust was powering up. I could go! Remote islands, romantic seafaring history. I could already see myself, wild wind in my hair, gazing out over the North Sea. Where magical seals come ashore and become human. I had plenty of time to plan. My husband, who married me for ideas like this, was ready to make the travel arrangements.
Knit Your Beanie
One of the charming aspects is that everyone attending, all these mad knitters, make the same hat to wear at Wool Week. The 2023 pattern is called Buggiflooer Beanie. In 2024, it was the Islesburgh Toorie. For 2025, it’s the Aal Ower Toorie pattern, designed by the Shetland Guild of Spinners, Knitters, Weavers, and Dyers.
It’s color-strand knitting. For those of us outside the Shetland shopping area, wool merchants there offer kits. Perfect. I ordered a kit, only three colors. I’m a good knitter, but haven’t knitted colors in years. I’d ease into it.
Not So Fast
By Row 2, I was at a full stop. I was going to need help. I’m sure they allow knitters to attend without a beanie, but that seemed like giving up too easily. I’d be embarrassed to show up and say, “Well, I couldn’t get this done.” Surely, an experienced knitter such as I could do it. I went to my local yarn shop, Ball & Skein, in Cambria. I showed Katie the kit. She gave me some pointers, and then suggested the upcoming color strand knitting class. I signed up.
Joining a Class
We met for the first of two classes the following week. Four other experienced knitters brought similar frustrations to the group. Good to know I’m not the only one having this problem! In a group of women with good skills, they were all funny and humble. We shared confusions over twisted yarn and keeping colors straight. Ways to fix mistakes. Admitting we sometimes rip out hours of work to correct a mistake made early on. We settled down to silence as we took up our needles. Stranded-color knitting classes are the quietest. Everyone is too focused to chat.
Beanies For All Places
Annie Groeninger, the instructor who owns the shop, has knitted beanies for locations across California. What a great idea! Perhaps I should create one for Piedras Blancas and the local elephant seal rookery.
Learning to separate my balls of yarn, one on each side, helped avoid twisting the yarn. It immediately helped me start Row 3.
Reading a Chart Pattern
Getting some momentum on knitting helped me in reading the chart. Charts are read from right to left. Keep track of what row you’re on with removable tape or by taking a photo on your phone and enlarging it. Learning how to catch the floats, the yarn that hangs behind when another color is being knitted, was the second big advance. Annie advises every three stitches. That became my rule. At home, it worked fine, except for the cat. He noticed how closely I was paying attention to the chart, which made it the preferred place for him to sleep. Batting the yarn ball was also entertaining. After the trouble I’d had keeping strands straight, his interference was too much. I put him outside so that I could work.
Progress
I committed myself to knitting a few rows a day. That way, the project would make progress. It worked. For that first hat, I used only two colors, but I completed the beanie. It came out a bit large, a common problem. A button and a tuck might help that.
With yarn left, I started a second beanie. I used all three colors for this one.
2024 Pattern
The 2024 pattern, the Islesburgh Toorie, was designed by the Doull family, SWW Patrons for 2024. It features the distinctive rams’ horns of the Shetland sheep. A Facebook Knit-A-Long group formed for support.
I gained confidence knitting the first beanie. I used five colors for the Toorie, adding gold for the rams’ horns. I could attend Wool Week with my toorie-clad head held high!
This year, I’m an experienced knitter, ready to offer advice to newcomers. My Aal Ower Toorie kit is on my needles, but I won’t use the full eight colors. That’s for the next hat.
Wool Week Events
Wool Week offers hundreds of events. For the most ambitious, getting tickets is as competitive as getting tickets to a Taylor Swift concert. When ticket sales started, people posted reports of being on hold for hours. I was so excited to attend that I didn’t need to get one of the most crowded events. I was thrilled to get a tour of Sumbrugh Head Lighthouse and a tour Behind the Scenes at the Shetland Archives, seeing unique and unusual documents from Shetland’s past. Many events are available without tickets. That left plenty of time to visit with other knitters, enjoy the open studios, pick up a class or tour from some other knitter, and — dare I say it — shop for yarn!
Christine Heinrichs writes from her home on California’s Central Coast. She keeps a backyard flock of a dozen hens: eight large fowl of various breeds and four Bantams.
Her book, How to Raise Chickens, was first published in 2007, just as the local food movement was starting to focus attention on the industrial food system. Backyard chickens became the mascot of local food. The third edition of How to Raise Chickens was published in January 2019. The Backyard Field Guide to Chickens was published in 2016. Look for them in Tractor Supply stores and online.
She has a B.S. in journalism from the University of Oregon and belongs to several professional journalism and poultry organizations.
Originally published in the September/October 2025 issue of Countryside and Small Stock Journal and regularly vetted for accuracy.
