Hihi! Hope ya’ll are safe and healthy and that your 2023 is starting off positively!

I just wanted to hop on and share some knitted hats I’ve made or am currently working on, starting with a couple I made as Christmas gifts for some of my fellow BTS ARMY. They live in Canada, so I figured wool hats would be a practical gift, and I used sockyarn dyed in colorways based on BTS’ music videos & albums from Hawari Bazaar, which I absolutely love!

This first one is the Barbotine pattern ($4 CAD), worked up in the “Love Yourself” colorway of the Nova Sock yarn. I used the chain plying technique to triple the strands, and I’m quite happy with how it turned out visually (the colors in real life are nicer — the peach is more pink), but I had a bit of trouble with the pattern. I began the brim with the recommended needle size, but it was way too tight, so I frogged it (which is a nightmare when you’re chain plying something) and tried again with the next needle size up. I completed the hat, but it’s still too small, and I don’t have a giant head. It’ll fit on my head but it just feels a bit tight and won’t pull down over my ears as much as I’d like. I’ve never met my friend irl so I’m just hoping she has a small head.

The second one went a bit better:

This one is the Violet Waffles pattern (free), worked up in the “Ddaeng” colorway of the Nova Sock yarn with 2 strands held together. I struggled to get this picture to turn out right, too (but the pattern was fine and the hat fits!). It is a waffle patterned hat and the stripes actually kind of coordinate with the waffle pattern, and I can say it looks better irl, too.

Now for some WIPs:

This is the Le Bonnet de Rosalie pattern (free), and I’m just using some mystery yarn that I think is acrylic (gasp!) It’s going well so far — I did an extra row of knit stitches between the 2nd and 3rd sets of cables, but I don’t think you can really tell unless you’re looking for mistakes, so I didn’t go back and fix it. You can see I did a provisional cast on, which is not called for in the free pattern, but I plan on going back with another yarn (a different mystery acrylic in blue) and making a lining so that the hat is extra toasty!

This may not look like much yet, but I’m always so pleased with long-tail tubular cast-ons so I figured I’d share those foundation rows now hehe. I’m working with Purl Soho’s free Classic Cuffed Hat pattern, although I’m going to alter it a bit, first by not doing the longer fold-up brim. For the cast-on I’m using a pair of plastic needles from this delightful candy-colored set that I think I got off of Amazon a while ago, and I’m actually going to use them for the whole ribbed brim because I’m not going to connect to work in the round until the main body of knit stitches begins. I’ll switch to circulars at that time, and I plan on turning this into a cat ear hat so I’ll just keep working the tube without decreases until the hat is around 7in.(18cm.), and I’ll do a three needle bind off or something along those lines and then invisibly tack down the ears. It’s hard to explain without pictures so I’ll take more as it goes along and share.

One note on the pattern, though: it says to use the larger needles for the ribbing and the smaller needles for the main body of the hat, and that seems contradictory to every single thing I’ve ever read about ribbing — I believe you’re supposed to use the smaller needles for ribbing because the stitches are typically so loose and stretchy — so I’m doing it the other way round. I also sized up the needles, since apparently I just knit tightly.

So that’s what I’ve been doing lately! I did finish my swamp witch costume for the Renaissance Faire, so I’ll share some pictures of that and talk about the different components I made in a future post. I think it turned out really well for my first costume!

That’s all for now, though. Thanks for stopping by! See you soon! 🙂