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.

Midst noun the middle point, part, or stage

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.

This is perfect for you if:

• You’ve got an absolutely glorious yarn (or a particularly opinionated one) you want to show off
• You need some autopilot knitting that still looks impressive

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)