This pattern (along with most of my earlier work) was retired in the summer of 2022. However, it may be available for a few days once or twice a year. Read on for details!

In the summer of 2022, I realized that maintaining a back catalog of hundreds of patterns was kind of overwhelming. I couldn’t do it and still release new things. So I took my old patterns down so I could keep doing new work.

Since then, a handful of my favorites have come back, and lovely new things have come out. But the vast majority of the old patterns are retired and will no longer be generally available.

However, enough folks have asked about some old favorites that I’m planning to make many of the retired patterns available for a few days once or twice a year (most likely in late spring and then again in the fall around Thanksgiving).

• If you see the buy buttons on this page, you’ve caught it on one of the days it’s available, and you’re welcome to grab it!
• If you don’t see the buy buttons on this page, then it’s not currently available.
• If you want to hear when the retired patterns will be available, subscribe to the mailing list or patreon, or keep an eye on my instagram.

Whirling adjective characterized by rapid movement round and round

I had the house to myself, and I was supposed to be taking the week off. That was the plan. I was supposed to read indulgent books and go out to dinner with friends and finally sort out the absolutely shameful pile of stuff in the garage that I really do have a plan for but just haven’t gotten to yet.

Instead I knit this. I stopped by the yarn store (a totally valid thing to do on a week off), grabbed these two yarns, took them home, and immediately cast on. Two days later, the books remained unread. I had not gone out to dinner. And the garage was still a shambles. But I had finished a rather fetching hat.

And really, I’m not even a little bit sorry. Half the point of taking time off is doing whatever sounds good. Once I started this hat, nothing sounded as good as sneaking in just one more row.

If you want to indulge yourself in something similarly enchanting, this could be just the thing. You’ll want two different yarns. I like ones with a lot of contrast between them, but color preferences are personal, and you know your own color sense best. You can work this with a huge range of yarn weights. I did mine with an aran weight yarn (that’s a big part of why I finished it in two days), but I’ve written the sizes and gauge so that you can use pretty much anything (fingering, sport, dk, worsted, aran, it’s super flexible). The two yarns don’t even have to be the same weight, brioche looks amazing with yarns of different weights put together.

Now, about that brioche thing…if you’re walking around telling yourself brioche just must be hard so you don’t want to do it, that’s ok. I totally told myself exactly that for years. But then one afternoon I spent an hour or two watching some videos (this one is especially handy) and swatching. At the end of the afternoon I had one of the biggest ‘oh…is that all there is to it?!?’ moments of my life and was totally hooked. Seriously if you can knit, purl, and yarn over you can brioche. You don’t have to if you don’t want to…but if the only reason you’re not doing it is because you are worried it’s hard, give it a try. You may surprise yourself with just how much you love it! I know I totally did.

The hat is written in three sizes (castons of 64, 80, and 96 stitches), and you should feel free to adjust your gauge a bit to fine tune the fit of the hat. Just be sure that you’re working at a gauge that gives you a fabric you like with your chosen yarn!

I recommend working at something around 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5, or 5 stitches per inch, and I’ve included a table to help you figure out what gauge you’ll want to use for your size. With that range of sizes and gauges, the hat will fit a head between 18.5 and 24.5 inches (with lots of points in between).

You’ll need two different yarns, about the same amount of each. You should be able to very comfortably make any size with 150 yards of each yarn. That’s a very generous estimate. I knit a hat for my large head with about 100 yards of each of my two aran weight yarns. But if you’re making a folded brim or knitting at a tighter gauge, you’d need more, so I’ve said 150 just to be safe.

This is perfect for you if:

• You’ve got a long weekend coming up and you suddenly find you want to have a hat at the end of it
• You’ve decided it’s time to finally just go ahead and give brioche a try (in which case welcome, welcome to the club, we have really good snacks)

It’s not for you if:

• You don’t like charts (the pattern uses charts)
• You hate swatching (you need to swatch to check your needle size)
• You don’t already know how to brioche and you don’t want to learn (the pattern is not a brioche tutorial, but if you can knit, purl, slip, and yarn over, and you have just a teeny tiny bit of faith in yourself, you can totally do this)