I made this hat upon request from my writing partner, Todd. He spent two years in South America and discovered the joys of alpaca fabrics. Although he isn’t a knitter, when I mentioned I worked with llama and alpaca yarns, he begged for a hat to replace the one he’d washed and felted by accident.

The hat needed to be warm, simple and, well, masculine.

I came up with a simple pattern that uses size 15 needles and one skein of Berocco Ultra Alpaca held triple-stranded so it knits in a flash.