I've been designing patterns for a while now, but most have been very simple and didn't take me more than a day or two to put together. I've been looking to challenge myself recently and, in my quest to finally knit myself a hat I want to wear, spent the last couple of weeks putting this hat together. I have to mention here that I was procrastinating quite a bit on my dissertation plan.
I've always knit but never really felt like a "serious" designer. I think this hat was a good first step to starting to define myself that way.
This hat was a challenge in a few respects: fully charting a pattern from scratch, figuring out how many cable repeats I can fit in a certain circumference, and decreasing while maintaining many of the cables all took some extra care. Below are the two versions of the hat I knit. The one of the left was the first pass at figuring out what would look good. For the second one, I added another cable twist and tried to decrease a little more gradually. I had to rip out the one of the right more than a few times to correct decreases and length. Overall, I'm very happy with the way the second one turned out and it was worth the temporary frustrations.
This hat is knit in a DK weight yarn on US Size 3 and Size 6 needles. The one on the right is knit in Madelinetosh Tosh DK in Aura -- I spent way more on this yarn than I would normally justify, but I felt this pattern was important enough. I started by fully charting it and then transformed the chart into written instructions.
Given how much time and effort this pattern took, I have decided I will sell this pattern rather than offering for free. I am currently in search of test knitters (check out my instagram to see the call!) and hope to be able to offer the pattern for download in a couple months!
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