Cosy Winter Hat

My office had its annual knitting club start up again at the beginning of Autumn and this year the group were aiming to make beanie hats for our charity partner St. Mungo's. Eager to get stuck in and excited to see the selection of yarn the company donated for the project we dove for the yarn box. Filled with a lovely selection of thick worsted weight yarn in pleasingly neutral shades of brown, grey, black and a sparkle of colour from a nice blue. Not wanting to use up the colourful yarn I opted for a ball of black and a ball of grey to make a two tone neutral hat.

My plan with the hat was to do the rim in the black and use a 2x2 rib stitch then for the top of the hat give the moss stitch a go since I'd never tried the stitch before. Overall the project was a quick knit with the yarns weight adding volume with ease. The rim was done in a flash using up the full black ball of yarn and it was time to learn the moss stitch.

I had heard the moss stitch was a good first 'next step' on a knitting journey and having done this hat I’m inclined to agree. So long as you can read the stitches in the row below then it's an absolute breeze of a stitch. It also comes out with a lovely warm and cosy textured feel which I think is perfect for this project. The quick pace continued until I needed to start decreasing. In order to preserve the moss stitch I made two decreases next to each other one knitwise and one purlwise depending on what the moss stich needed. Which I think turned pretty well. Given the repeats I did end up with some long sections of knits or purls as you look along rows. Ultimately it doesn't detract from the overall look in my opinion.