I’ve had my eyes on this pattern for quite a while. I’m a HUGE Percy Jackson and the Olympians fan, and I even have a couple homemade Camp Half Blood shirts. When I started hanging out with a new friend I met in college, we realized that we were both fans of PJO and really bonded over it. Both of us being cosplayers, we decided to team up and cosplay Percy and Annabeth, two of the main characters. I showed her this pattern while we were in the planning stages, just to say, “hey isn’t this cool?” and she LOVED the pattern as much as I did. So, because both of us liked the pattern so much, I made up my mind to make us both matching beanies for when it get cooler!

The original pattern is for a much smaller head (to match the fact that the target demographic for the books is elementary and middle school kids), so I had to do a few tests to get the proportions right for an adult head. The first mock-up I made I cast on 96 stitches (the original called for 84) and knitted 29 rows in the body of the hat (the same in the original). The hat turned out wayyyy too small. The second hat I tried I cast on 108 stitches and knit 39 rows. The resulting hat was way too big. So I split the difference with the rows (34) and went back to 96 stitches for the cast on and the hat was perfect!

It turns out that orange yarn is not very easy to find. There were only two shades of orange that would have worked at the Hobby Lobby in my area, and while I’m not 100% happy with the one I ended up with, it’s the closest match to the Camp Half Blood shirts that we’ve got. The hats knitted up quickly, though they did irritate my recently diagnosed carpal tunnel (ouch!). This was the first project that I’ve ever had to use duplicate stitch for, and it turned out pretty well, though it was far more tedious than I expected. I originally wanted to put the full “Camp Half-Blood” on the brim of the hats, but for some reason, the chart provided wouldn’t fit comfortably on the hat and so I decided to just use the initials “CHB”.

All in all, I’m extremely pleased with these hats. I learned several new techniques (how to do a provisional cast on and pick up provisional stitches, switching needles sizes, knitting in the round, using DPNs, and duplicate stitch) and they turned out much better than I expected. I can’t wait until it gets cold enough to wear mine out, and I can’t wait to show my friend hers.

Techniques learned: provisional cast on, picking up provisional stitches, duplicate stitch