My hat (adult medium) was made using the Mode at Rowan Alpaca Wool and my husband’s (adult extra large) was made using the Alpaca Cotton yarn.

Starting the hat was a little difficult because I was learning new techniques, but it worked out well after watching a few videos on how to start a pinhole/disappearing loop.

This was my husband’s first knitting project, so I started his hat considering the difficult cast-on and did the colorwork while he knit everything else. Overall, this knit up super fast and the modifications PDF made adding my “DA BEARS” pattern seamless. I added the colorwork to section C of the hat in the modifications PDF.

In order to add this 42 stitch chart, I simply divided the stitch count by 2 and figured out how many stitches I would need to accommodate the patch. I wanted “DA BEARS” to fit twice. Once on each side of my head which would take up 84 stitches. My hat was 112 stitches and my patch was 3.125 inches across, so I multiplied by my gauge of 6 stitches per inch to figure out the gap I needed.

3.125 * 6 = 18.75 stitch gap needed for patch
42 * 2 = 84 stitches
112 - 84 = 28 stitches with no colorwork
28 - 4 = 24 stitches for the patch

I decided to leave a 4 stitch gap between one instance of “DA BEARS” to the next instance of “DA BEARS.” This means that at the start of my first row for “DA BEARS,” I did 2 stitches of the background color (blue), and then started following the chart. At the end of the chart, I did the background color (blue) for 24 stitches, then started the chart again, ending with 2 stitches of the background color (blue).

I did catch my floats for my hat but then had to duplicate stitch to cover up the orange yarn peeking through. So, when I did the colorwork for my husband’s hat, I decided to only catch where I knew the patch would cover up the orange and it turned out way better.

The math for my husband’s hat began with 128 stitches total for an adult extra large.

3.125 * 6 = 18.75 stitch gap needed for patch
42 * 2 = 84 stitches
128 - 84 = 44 stitches with no colorwork
Decided on a 10 stitch gap on either side of DA BEARS
44 - 20 = 24 stitches for the patch

Then started the colorwork round with 10 stitches of the background color, knit the chart, 24 stitches of background color, knit the chart, and end with 10 stitches of background again.

I can see myself making so many more Musselburgh hats in different colors and with different colorwork charts! Obsessed with the pattern.