This soft, slouchy hat is named for one of Sappho’s most famous poems, which begins:

Poikilothron immortal Aphrodite,
child of Zeus, I beg you, do not
shatter with terrible pains,
lady, my heart

Poikilothron could be translated in many ways, but “with a mind shimmering with rainbow colors” is one rather lovely possibility.

For those who would like a rainbow-shimmering head, this hat is worked with a large striped heart motif in the colors of the LGBTQ+ pride flag. Color charts are also given for a variety of more specific pride flags (ace, trans, bi, etc.) There are a lot of varieties, some more widely used than others, but I’ve tried to cover the main ones by offering hearts divided into 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 equal stripes, plus special templates for bi and demi flag hearts.

The pattern has instructions for creating the heart via either intarsia or duplicate stitch, but assumes you know the basics of these techniques. I do include tips for my preferred method for seamless intarsia in the round.

Sizes: Adult S/M/L, fitting a 20-23” (51-58 cm) head.

Yarn: 125-150 yds (115-140 m) worsted weight yarn for main color, and small amounts (0.5-3 yds) for heart

Suggested yarn:

• Main color: 1-2 balls Knit Picks Reverie, 80% alpaca, 20% acrylic, 137 yds/50 g

• Heart: Knit Picks Swish Worsted and Swish Worsted Brights, 100% superwash merino, 110 yds/50 g

Note: If you downloaded this or saved it to your library in the first day or two it was available, please redownload the file! I originally uploaded a version without the colorwork charts merged in.