Knitting

Patterns, projects and techniques

Knit a Super Cozy Hat

by

I’ve talked before about how I don’t love wearing hats, but I will admit they’re fun and satisfying to knit. And honestly if I went outside more when it’s cold (I try not to whenever possible) I would probably like wearing hats more.

And if the hat happens to include a touch of mohair for even more warmth and coziness, that might just be the thing to get me over not liking to wear hats.

The Cheslie Toque from Kiyomi Burgin uses a strand of worsted weight yarn along with mohair, which doesn’t change the gauge that much but makes the hat warmer and gives it a bit of a halo. But it’s not too much to obscure the pretty eyelet pattern that runs up the hat in panels.

This hat is worked from the bottom up and has a fold over, ribbed brim. It comes in three sizes (which I would say are probably for teens, adult small and adult large) and is meant to be worn with 2 to 5 inches of negative ease to give you a snug fit and to help open up the eyelet pattern.

If you don’t like the mohair or just don’t have any on hand, you can use a worsted weight yarn by itself, just make sure to check your gauge before you get started.

The pattern is available on Ravelry.

Looking for more fun hat patterns to knit? Here is a collection of worsted weight hat knitting patterns that are perfect to make with leftovers from other projects. I also recently shared a bunch of hat knitting patterns for fall, and if you’ve never knit a hat before you can start with these flat hat knitting patterns that don’t require working in the round (and sometimes don’t need any shaping at all!).

[Photo: Kiyomi Burgin]

Next Pattern:

Have you read?

Knit a Fish Pouch, for Reasons

I can’t resist a pattern that’s both useful and a little silly, and that’s exactly how I feel about the Rybka pouch pattern from the delightfully named Rat and Sea Witch.

I know you’re going to ask, because I did, too. Rybka means little fish in Polish. (And because you’re also probably going to ask, Rat and Sea Witch comes from people’s attempts to say the designer’s name, Ratasiewicz, which if you say it fast kind of sounds like rat and sea witch.)

It’s easy to make a little fish bag in different sizes to suit your needs. The pattern has specific instructions for an Airpods Pro case and a pencil case, but you could change the length easily to hold more stuff, and change the size in general by working with a different weight of yarn.

The pattern calls for sock yarn and mohair held together to make a fingering weight gauge, but you could try it with heavier yarn and see what size bag you end up with.

Whatever size you make it, this looks like a fun project for holding trinkets or everyday items. The mouth of the fish is the mouth of the bag, and it closes with a drawstring that is also the strap. I wonder, too, if you could make one of these with a small clasp frame that could be the fish’s mouth and then you could just work I cord straps that would attach to the sides of the fish.

I could also see stripes, or fish of different colors to use up your yarn leftovers. How about a sunglasses case with a little loop to attach to your bag? Once you start thinking about all the ways you could use a fish-shaped bag in your life, I think you’ll see that you probably need more than one.

If you make one of these I would love to know how it went!

You can grab a copy of the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Rat and Sea Witch]