In my Spring to Finish round-up post, I mentionned that I had been knitting a hat for a birthday present for my brother-in-law, my husband’s youngest sibling, who has just turned 30 – Happy Birthday Leroy!
I had this leftover yarn from my husband’s winter scarf. It’s Sirdar Escape DK in Fever, as this old post reminds me. I thought it would be a good and sweet idea to make a matching hat for his baby bro. Now, my brother-in-law is a musician-surfer-basket ball player kind of guy, so rather groovy. It couldn’t be any kind of hat, it had to be slouchy, huge and reminiscent of rasta men’s hats. I, of course, couldn’t find anything close and nice enough.
So, I came up with a pattern! I casted on 128 stitches, did just under 2in of 2×2 ribbing, then knitted 1 row and after that did an increase row, where I added 40 stitches evenly.
I then picked up the tiny scales pattern from Vogue Stitchionary book (the first one, I think). I failed at math and at counting my stitches, so I had a 2 knit stitches ridge at the ‘back’ (it’s knitted in the round, so there’s no back, really!), but it’s not really noticeable.
When it was dimmed long enough, I divided it by 4, placed markers, then k2tog before each marker, first every other row for a dozen of rows, then every row. When I had 12 stitches left and about 2 inches of yarn left, I threaded that onto a tapestry needle, and closed the hole.
I used 3 skeins in total (that was a good stash busting operation too - now I only have 1 and a half skein left!)
I love it! It’s got a good slouch and looks really groovy. You can’t really tell on the picture (I was late on this project and had to rush to the post office as soon as the ends were weaved in). I’m considering making a smaller one for myself. The tiny scales pattern is mindless enough without being boring and it looks really good and worked fantastically well with this yarn.
I’m being told that it is ‘way cool’ and that it has been appreciated. Yippee!
