Intended to make Black Forest and almost immediately decided NOT to make Black Forest, not really. But that’s where the inspiration came from, so I’ll link to it, anyway (plus, I cast on the same number of stitches). If you’ve been knitting for awhile, you really don’t need a pattern in order to make a slouchy hat, but it’s nice to have someone else do the thinking for you in terms of how many stitches to start with, if nothing else. I used Caitlin Ffrench’s CO number and then modified from there:

• Increased 20 stitches in first row after ribbing
• Striped with MC and scraps, one row per color
• Will forgo the bow, which I like a lot but would most likely never wear (it’s something I’d like on other people more than me, I think, since it’s quasi-fussy-ish and I’m super un-into fussy or quasi-fussy or even quasi-fussy-ish clothing options. I’ve had things similar to this and have found that what invariably happens is the weight of the bow/side decoration/flower/whatever constantly pulls toward the bottom, in an attempt to make itself the lowest point on the hat. In practical terms, that means the decoration is always skewed to some ridiculous-looking position and the hair around my face is constantly being pulled out of place as the hat slides. Nope. Not going there.

Will most likely make a normal pompom or a knitted one; if I knit a pompom (that is, a stuffed sphere), I’ll use the red fur I have. (In fact, I DID make a pompom, a pompom so tight that it would probably float on water; I love it.)

Yarns used: Knit Picks Stroll DK, Knit Picks Gloss lace, the hot pink fingering that went into the Mr. Yuk shawls, LB Amazing, some vintage lace-ish weight boucle, a pale purple fingering that may or may not be a Knit Picks yarn, a Valley Yarns silk & merino laceweight, vintage scraggly (worsted), a teeny bit of Jelli Beenz, an even teenier bit of the Bergere mohair I used in my Sunset From the Edge of Space (or whatever its exact title is).