The Helen Hat

This hat was named after the person it was designed and made for, who is the beautiful and lovely art teacher at our local school.  She is a friendly bubbly person who is always happy, and who comes up with the most amazingly beautiful artworks as easily as she breathes.  She looked after our cat one holiday for us while we were off on our honeymoon (cruise around the pacific - amazing!!  But that's another story :P).  Since she had seen me out and about in my knitted hats before, as payment for looking after our cat she asked me to knit a hat for her, which I was more than happy to do!  

The Helen Hat

I have now knitted this hat twice, once for her, and because I loved it so much, once for myself as well :)  I love it because it's such a simple easy pattern, with only a single row of a 2-stitch repeat to remember.   It takes me around 8 hours or so to knit this hat, but I am by no means a fast knitter, so for some people it would take less.

This hat was worked in acrylic yarn – normally I don’t like using acrylic because it feels pretty awful to knit with and doesn't keep you nearly as warm, but this was all our local store had in the right colour (yes our local store sucks that much!).  It is designed to be a bit of a baggy hat, but of course you can change the size of the hat by changing the number of stitches cast on to give it more or less of the baggy feel.  Just keep the number of cast on stitches as a multiple of 6, and you will be fine. 

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Materials:

• Size 4.0mm (US 6) circular needles or DPNs
• Size 5.0mm circular needles
• Size 5.0mm DPNs
• One 100g ball of 8 ply Panda Magnum Soft - 100% acrylic
• Tapestry needle for weaving in ends

Top of the hat

Pattern:

Cast on 108 stitches on size 4.0mm circular needles. Join to work in the round.

Work in the round in K2 P2 garter stitch until work measures one inch long (8 rounds)

Switch to size 5.0mm circular needles for lace pattern.

Work lace pattern for as long as required to get desired hat length (for me this meant 16 repetitions of lace pattern – i.e. 32 rows).  Decrease as per below instructions; switch to DPNs when necessary. 

Lace:

Round 1: *K2tog, YO*

Round 2: Knit

Decreasing:

Round 1: *K2tog YO, K2tog YO, K2tog*

Round 2 and all even rounds: Knit

Round 3: *K2tog YO, K2tog YO, K1*

Round 5: *K2tog YO, K2tog, K1*

Round 7: *K2tog YO*

Round 9: *K2tog YO, K2tog*

Round 11: *K2tog YO, K1*

Round 13: *K2tog YO, K2tog YO, K2tog*

Round 15: *K2tog YO, K2tog, K1*

Round 17: *K2tog YO, K2tog*

Round 19: *K2tog, K1*

Round 21: *K2tog*

Cut yarn and weave tail through remaining stitches, pull tight. Weave in ends.

Bottom of the hat

If you do use this pattern, drop me a note in the comments below to let me know how it went :)