Racing Green and Cosy

Dad was in the market for a new hat and, rather sweetly, one specifically made by me with my little tag on it. I couldn't say no, nor deny that it made me pretty happy when he asked for it. Specifications were: green, not itchy and no bobble. With that simple brief, I got to work.

This hat started off with a basic 2x2 ribbing for the rim. Given the weight of the yarn this was a sizeable number of stitches. Based on my own noggin as a template I ended up with 168 stitches in the round. The ribbing was around 10cm long to allow for folding over.

Then I started on the body of the hat and quickly ran into an unexpected potential problem. As the brief required the hat to be non-itchy and super soft I had selected King’s merino super-wash wool to make sure the hat was smooth and itch free. However, the yarn was lighter weight than I was originally expected and the stockinette stitch body of the hat didn't look like it would keep out the cold.

I needed to come up with another plan.

First I tried knitting holding two strands of yarn together. This worked in creating a warm fabric but it was too stiff without going up a few more needles sizes but I didn’t want to alter the size of the hat too much. Interestingly this also massively increased the curling of stockinette stitch in the round and so overall it didn’t feel like the best approach.

Instead I tried knitting two hats in one using double knitting. Rather dauntingly this required doubling up the number of stitches on in the round giving a total of 336 stiches! To get there I made a foundation row at the end of the ribbing knitting front and back all the way through the round. Then I introduced the second strand of yarn working it into every second stitch purl-wise.

The journey had officially began. Making every odd stitch with the original ball of yarn in knits and every even stitch with the new yarn in purls. One new challenge presented itself, keeping the inner and outer strands of yarn separated while knitting and make sure that the two pieces remained mostly separate. To overcome this I grabbed a piece of wire and fashioned a rudimentary knitting ring with two holes, one for each strand of yarn. In hindsight I think I should have just purchased one. This thing was pretty rough to wear and required frequent breaks to stop my finger turning a worrying shade of blue. Nonetheless I persevered and ended up with a fetching green beanie hat.

As much as I'm pleased with it the real test came in my dad's judgement. And I'm ecstatic to say he loved it!