A New Hat

I have been wearing my hair in a bun most days.  I desperately need a haircut, and I just don't feel like doing much of anything with my hair, so it gets twisted into a high bun and a couple of bobby pins hold it in place.  And while I have a bunch of crocheted and knit caps, when my hair is in a bun, the cap lifts up and my ears are exposed.  That doesn't work for me in cold weather.  If my ears get cold, I get a headache, so a hat it necessary for winter walks.

I do have one slouchy beanie style hat that I knit years ago, but I wanted to add another one to my wardrobe since I wear a hat every day while walking Mr. Tino in the cold.  (Don't worry, he always has on one of his hand knit sweaters to keep him warm!)

After finishing my 1940s Style Jumper with this lovely green yarn, I found this piece of knit sweater in a project bag.  Years ago, I paired the tweedy yarn with a sweater pattern, decided I didn't love the way it was turning out and thought the yarn deserved better, and abandoned the half knit project.  Well, that meant that I had enough yarn remaining to make myself a hat!  Perfect timing.  So I frogged back, and suddenly had two skeins of yarn to play with.

The pattern I chose is the March Hat from Melbourne Woolens.  It's a free pattern, but I chose it mostly because I loved the pattern texture and thought it would play well with my tweedy yarn.

The directions call for a provisional cast on, which I have never tried before.  One quick internet search later, and I found plenty of information about how to do just that.  Next time, I think I will use a thinner waste yarn, but this gray acrylic was the first yarn I came across and it worked out okay.

My gauge didn't quite match the given directions, so I sized down.

For most of the body I used circular needles, but I didn't have a small enough circular for such a small number of cast on stitches.  So for the ribbing, I used double pointed needles until I made it to the stitch pattern.

And, of course, I needed those double pointed needles again once the circumference of the hat started to decrease . . .

and decrease . . .

until there was hardly any stitches left at all.

One of these days I am going to learn the magic loop technique, but until then, it's a nice change of pace to use the double pointed needles.

And then it was time to make a pom-pom.

But first I had to remember where I had stashed my Clover pom-pom makers, because they make such lovely pom-poms!

Because I had frogged this yarn, it was super curly.  I was not entirely sure what a pom-pom made of kinky yarn would look like, but I forged ahead.

It turns out, the curly yarn adds a lovely texture to the pom-pom.  The overall effect reminds me of a vintage Persian lamb coat.

I am not entirely sure what will happen once I wash the hat, and that texture may disappear, but for now, I am enjoying the look.

And it's very exciting to have a little bit of hat variety for my daily dog walks with Mr. Tino.  He has so many hand knit sweaters, I felt a little bit stilly wearing the same old hat day after day!  But now, problem solved!!