I designed this pattern to use a special gift of fleece from castlemilk. She had gifted me some fleece from Letison, who is a 3/4 Shetland x 1/4 Blue-faced Leicester, with the most magnificent multi-tonal grey coat that simply had to be shown off. This hat is the result.

This is a stranded two-colour hat, knitted in the round, designed to fit a large (23.5 inch) adult head. It uses less than one 100g skein of each colour (the background colour uses approximately twice as much as the contrast colour).

The design consists of a 16 stitch repetition so can easily be sized for a larger or smaller head accordingly. Bear in mind that wool stretches so if adjusting the dimensions, knit to a circumference approximately 10% smaller than the desired circumference so that the hat fits snuggly.

The specified gauge was measured from the body of the the final, washed hat, knitted in the round. It was achieved using 3.25mm needles, however please use whichever needle size gives you gauge. For reference, I have quite loose tension and usually have to go down at least one needle size when knitting other people’s designs, so it is quite possible than you will need to use a bigger needle than me!