Meet our newest knit design: the Toronto Toque!

I designed the Toronto Toque as part of the designer-producer sections for the Great Ontario Fibre Fair. The bottom-up stranded colourwork hat pattern includes three sizes, from toddler to adult.

Two fibre farmers in Ontario, Laura of Twin Oaks Farm and Romy of Revolution Wool Co, created the Great Ontario Fibre Fair in 2021. By showcasing locally grown fibres, the fibre fair hopes to connect the farmers and animals who grow the fibres to the artisans and consumers who purchase them. The fair also encourages people to share patterns, ideas and fibre sources widely for others to see. Created as an online fair, it is similar to a country fair. People bring their best work to display it and have it judged against their neighbours in friendly competition.

Entries must contain 100% Ontario grown fibre (wool, alpaca, mohair, etc.), may be dyed in any way or processed anywhere in Canada, and may be blended (eg. wool and alpaca).

The Toronto Toque uses worsted weight yarn in two colours from Twin Oaks Farm. I decided to use two natural colours of wool yarn. This will not only showcase the gorgeous undyed fleeces of Ontario sheep, but also provide inspiration to use natural fleece colours. Traditionally, coloured fleeces were not as valued as white fleeces, which could by dyed a myriad of colours. Twin Oaks Farm is a fibre farm just outside of Guelph, Ontario. The farm raises sheep in addition to cows, horses, and chickens. The flock is comprised of breeds known for producing exquisite soft fiber including Romney, Bluefaced Leicester, Rambouillet, and Finn. 

The Toronto Toque showcases Toronto’s unofficial mascot, the raccoon or ‘trash panda.’ The raccoon face repeats are bordered by geometric shapes. Toronto is our hometown and where we both currently live. We see our fair share of raccoons, so when I sketched out the raccoon face chart, I knew I had to
name this hat after Toronto.

The hat starts with a folded brim in the grey yarn. After you reach the desired width of brim (I prefer a 10 cm / 4″ brim to fold over to 5 cm / 2″), you start the colourwork. The stranded colourwork pattern uses only two colours, and none of the floats are longer than seven stitches. Following the colourwork chart, you knit the hat and centred double decreases before breaking the yarn. To finish, you pull the yarn tail through the remaining stitches. Often during colourwork, you hold the motif yarn dominant. However, in the Toronto Toque, it is imporant to do the opposite. We recommend that you hold the grey yarn dominant so that the stitches show up against the dark yarn of the motif.

Lastly, be sure to block your finished hat in a gentle wool wash (we like Eucalan and Soak). Blocking will even out the colourwork stitches and give the hat a beautiful finish.

You can get the Toronto Toque pattern on Ravelry or our Etsy shop here. Be sure to tag your projects with #torontotoque so we can see what you’ve made!

Also, check out our other knitwear designs:

• Lichtenberg Hat
• Osaka Hat
• Riyadh Hat and Cowl
• Tucson Hat

As well as our crochet designs:

• Berlin Hat
• Berlin Cowl

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