Hats

Before Christmas, my sister requested a plain black golf hat with a pompom for a friend of hers. It had to be black and be warm over the ears. It had to have a good-sized pompom, but most of all, it most definitely should not be a beanie (but not slouchy either). The recipient had been searching in vain for the right hat for a couple of years and had drawn a blank...

No pressure then! It was practically the perfect storm of things a knitter doesn't want to hear - black is horrible to knit in the winter, the recipient knew exactly what they wanted, but no pattern was suggested and as my sister wanted to surprise the recipient, no measurements or opinions on patterns were available!

I found the Astronomer pattern and suggested knitting it plain without the stripes, but my sister decided that actually, her friend quite liked stripes but I could choose the colour.




I ended up knitting two of these as the first was too large. I made the second one smaller by removing one repeat (9 stitches) and some length. The black yarn is Drops Nepal and the colours are Drops Big Merino all knitted on 5mm needles. The Resident Radiologist happily wore the big one all winter and I've never heard how my sister's friend is getting on with his...

After Christmas I went to the p/hop yarn swap at The Yarn Cake in Glasgow and picked up an absolutely beautiful skein of 4ply BFL yarn from Ripples Crafts. The colourway was the wonderfully named 'Ancient Hill Tartan'.
I wasn't sure what to knit with this until I realised that I really needed an easy to pull-on-and-wear hat too. I've got several lovely berets, but these always need 'arranging' to look right and with two small kids, I rarely have time for 'arranging'.



A while ago, I knitted three Sock Yarn Hats for my daughter and the sons of a friend. It occurred to me that this would work just as well for me and the pattern went right up to adult sizes.



I knitted it on 3mm needles. The turned brim is lovely and warm over my ears and it's the perfect pull-on-and-wear hat. I'm not sure that it showcases the colours in the yarn as well as it could, but it might well be one of those yarns where the colours are always going to look better in the skein than knitted up.
I've just realised that these photos don't showcase the colours particularly well either - winter light in Glasgow isn't great for photography. There's a lovely deep plum, a burnt orange and an olive green.

Clearing the backlog #2 - Little Hats

These all started when DD needed a new hat for the winter. She's getting to the stage where she has an opinion about what she wears (especially the colour) and would generally prefer pink. I'd generally prefer anything but pink (especially in large quantities), so I reckoned that a compromise could be reached.

Years ago, I signed up to a Lorna's Laces sock yarn club from Get Knitted for a year. Two skeins every month... and at the very most I've used a couple of those skeins. I keep saving them for special. One of the colourways, Fandango, struck me as the perfect compromise for this hat. It contained pink, but was nicely balanced by purple and a white/pale grey.

I chose the Charlie's Sock Yarn Hat pattern by Aimee Alexander and knitted the toddler size in the round on 3mm needles.

The pompoms were made on my new pompom makers ( I decided that two circles of cardboard like I used to do as a child was way too fiddley for adult fingers, especially when the pompoms are only 1.5 inches in diameter). These pompom makers are definitely the way to go and I now own a collection of them from minute to huge.

Shortly after I made the DD's hat, a good friend of mine had a little boy who obviously needed  a hand-knit hat, so I knit another in the baby size using Regia Galaxy in the Saturn colourway...

and then I made another toddler one in Regia Sock Yarn in the Zanzibar colourway for his big brother who is a little older than DD because his little brother couldn't have all the fun.

This pattern is excellent. It sizes up well, and the turned brim is lovely  and warm over the ears. I also think that it looks better than ribbing. I made a minor modification in that I used a three needle bind-off at the crown instead of lots and lots of kitchener stitch.