Knit a Hat Like Archie’s

Prince Harry and Megan have been in the news a lot this week, but before that they were spotted in Canada and baby Archie was seen wearing an adorable hat with two pom-pom ears.

The company that made his hat, Make Give Live, said orders have gone through the roof since the pint-sized royal was seen sporting the hat.

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But since we are knitters, we know we can make our own.

The exact pattern is the Cocobear design, which you can also buy direct in a kit for $20, or the pattern alone for $8.

If you want to reverse engineer it, the hat has 2×2 ribbing and a Stockinette Stitch body and regular decreases at the top to give it a round shape.

Lion Brand Yarn recently sent a newsletter featuring the Royal Baby Beanie Bear Hat, which looks similar but has a shorter section of decreases.

Jessie Molzan has a design she’s calling the Archie Bear Hat that has no crown shaping, but is worked straight to the desired length and closed up with a three-needle bind off. If you prefer that look the pattern is $2 on Ravelry, with proceeds going to the Australian Red Cross and WIRES Emergency Wildlife Rescue.

Another good option is to take any baby hat pattern (maybe the Basic Baby Hat by Heather Tucker or my Super Speedy Bulky Hat) and add pom-poms to the sides.

Are you planning to make an Archie hat? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo via Make Give Live.]

Next Pattern:

Stitch dictionaries are a fun way to learn new-to-you knitting stitch patterns or to take a deep dive into a particular technique. Debbie Tomkies offers 100 cable stitch designs and thoughts on how to incorporate them into projects in her Cable Knitting Stitch Dictionary.

Each stitch pattern is shown in a large swatch photo and with written and charted instructions. Any special stitches are included on the page. The stitches are rated on a difficulty scale of 1 to 3, and the pattern notes also indicate how many extra stitches you should add to a project if you’re going to work this cable (since cables pull the fabric closer together you need to compensate for that) as well as how many stitches and rows are in the repeat if you want to design a project yourself.

The cables are arranged into sections: classic cables, combinations, all-over panels, creative cables, motifs and panels and cabled edges and borders.

It’s fun to flip through the designs to think about projects you can add a single cable or two to or make with an allover cabled design. Or you could make swatches of different cables and sew them together into a pillow cover or a throw.

At the back of the book there’s a section on general cable knitting techniques, reading charts, working swatches and avoiding errors (though it mentions working the wrong number of rows between cable turns, it doesn’t share how to count rows between cables to avoid this mistake).

It also talks about how to design your own cables, combine cables in a project, choose the right yarn and needles and determine how many more stitches you need to cast on when working cables instead of stockinette stitch. There’s also a glossary of symbols and abbreviations you may find in cable knitting and other patterns.

The book provides a good overview of things you can do with cables, as well as some fun things you might not have tried like infinity cables and horizontal cables. It’s a great book for a designer who likes to work with cables or a knitter who wants to play with different stitches in their projects.

About the book: 176 pages, paperback, 100 stitch patterns. Published 2024 by David & Charles. Suggested retail price $26.99.

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