This Pattern is Retired…but you can (probably) get it in November

I have a lot of patterns! But I also get overwhelmed if I have to deal with them all at once. So I’ve picked 12 of my favorites (the Core Collection) to keep around. Then every few months, I decide on a theme or a technique and make a handful of related patterns (the Rotating Collection) available for a little while (then they go away again).

The other patterns are retired and are not generally available. However, because I know some folks will want them, I make many of the retired patterns available for a few weeks every November. If you want me to tell you when they’re back, subscribe to the mailing list or patreon, and I’ll let you know!

• If you see the buy buttons on this page, you’ve caught it on one of the days it’s available!
• If you don’t see the buy buttons on this page, it’s not currently available.
• If you want to hear when the retired patterns are available (most likely in November), subscribe to the mailing list or patreon, or keep an eye on my instagram.

  ---

Low effort, high impact. That’s what I’m looking for in my knitting these days. And this really does the job. All that stockinette is as mellow as it gets. And the stripe is ever so much more distracting than it has any right to be. You put the two together and somehow both the knitting and the finished product are a little bit magical.

A lot of the magic really comes down to the yarn. Of course you can use solids or semi solids and it will look great (those yarns pretty much always look great no matter what). But if you have a speckled yarn, or a super variegated yarn, or some other highly opinionated yarn that you can’t quite figure out what to do with…well this is what you do with it. You give it lots of stockinette so it doesn’t feel crowded (so many obstreperous yarns just need a little space to shine on their own terms without any patterning to obscure their charms). Then you find a fuzzy yarn that works nicely with one of the colors in your opinionated yarn, and you sit back and watch the two of them play together.

You really are going to have fun (which is good, since I have it on good authority that these hats often end up getting claimed by anyone who sees them, so you may well end up making more than one)!

The hat is written in six sizes (castons of 88, 96, 104, 112, 120, and 128 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 yarns!

I recommend working at something around 4.5, 5, 5.5, or 6 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 17.5 and 25.5 inches (with lots of points in between).

Oh, and just to help you plan, I used about 175 yards of the main yarn (the gray yarn) and 50 yards of the contrast yarn (the pink one) to make a hat for a large adult. If you’re making a bigger or taller hat (or if you use a skinnier yarn), you might want more like 225 yards of the main yarn and 60 yards of the contrast yarn yarn.