for a dear friend, you drop everything and you make her two hats!
A friend sent me a photo and asked me to make her a hat like the one someone else was wearing. It initially looked to me like a brioche hat, so I found a free brioche hat pattern, pulled out two skeins of yarn that I thought coordinated (Gynx Yarn worsted in First Bloom and Unplanned Peacock DK in Icy Rainbow), and set to work. The pattern I used was a one-size hat, and I used my usual stretchy long-tail cast-on. Needles were US2.5 for the brim and US4 for the body. It is slightly large, but still fits nicely.
The top is the outside of the hat, and this is the inside.
It is reversible. Or rather it was. But she asked for a pom pom, so I made her one that we can attach.
Once I finished it, I found instructions for a hat that looks similar (and I think it is closer to the hat in the photo), using a single yarn. The yarn I chose is a little bit heavier weight, more like an aran weight. When she saw me knitting it also, she asked for a pom pom on it too. So I’ve made and attached that one, and just need to drop it by so she has a couple from which to choose on whatever day she decides to wear one.
This one is the fisherman’s rib stitch, and is knit in a completely different way from the brioche stitch, but the results look very similar. I cast on 80 stitches loosely (instead of the previous 96), and used slightly larger needles (US5 for the cast on and first two rounds, then US7 for the body of the hat). I used the decreases from a shaker stitch hat pattern because my own decreases didn’t look great.
If I make the first hat (two-color brioche) again, I may try a fewer number of stitches. I don’t think that going down further in needle size will make it much tighter. I may look at the leftover yarns I have to see if any will work together. I actually probably have just enough left over after making the pom pom to make a second one in the same colors, so I might just do that too…