Firstly, bare with me. This is my first knitted pattern and I come to it from a primarily crocheters point of view. This pattern is more of a recipe of how I made this hat.. how to put the three pieces together. Also I should mention I usually only get to craft when I’m half awake (night shift and kids) and exact counts never seem to be my thing. This hat will work without the exact counts because goodness knows I didn’t have exact ones…
A family member found a hat and thought of me asking me to make it for them. I found the pattern for it and of course it was a paid pattern… anyone who knows me knows I don’t prefer to buy singular patterns like that. Personal preference and all… I wouldn’t have a problem with it if it was a dollar or two, but I can’t justify six dollars for one pattern. That’s just me though and my personal soapbox because I have been burned before by that.
Anywho what follows is how I made this hat in as simplest terms as I can make it. In true crocheter fashion I didn’t do a gauge swatch. My hope is that you can adjust this to fit any size yarn. Just use the corresponding straight and circular needles (or dpn I suppose) for your yarn. I will of course list what I used.
Straight needles US 10/6.00mm
16″ Circular needles US 10/6.00mm
Optional crochet hook J/6.00mm
Cable needle
Darning needle
#5 Bulky yarn (I used I Love This Chunky! yarn I found at Hobby Lobby. I bought 2 skeins and each skein has 109 yards. I had a decent amount leftover and honestly I don’t know if I would buy that again. The yarn got fuzzy just working with it and after the first wash… more than I would think appropriate. I did take a picture of the leftover amount to show.)
Very cute button
First thing is to make the cabled part. This is essentially a cabled headband. I found a lovely pattern already written up! WOOt! So use this pattern and make a headband to the size of 21″. For me this ended up being 13 repeats… she mentioned that she did 14. Bind off and seam the two ends together.
Now, with the right side facing and using circular needle pick up the stitches along the one side. Now since I had 13 repeats of 8 each that left me picking up 104, place marker if you want. It’ll be a spiral from here out so it doesn’t have to be exact.
Knit around for 2 rounds
Now, maybe it’s just me, but 104 stitches in this bulky yarn seems a bit excessive. I wanted to get it down to roughly 80 stitches. So this is how I did it, but you might have to adjust to decrease to the amount of stitches that works for you. Keep in mind I was designing this for an average size woman’s head.
*knit 7, decrease* around (this should give you roughly 93 stitches, seriously, don’t sweat the count to be exact)
Knit around for 2 rounds
*knit 12, decrease* around
Knit around and count how many stitches you have. If you have more than 80 stitches then on the next round just space out a few decreases around on the next round. I had 83 somehow so I just put 3 decreases on the next round. Seriously, don’t sweat it.
knit in stockinette stitch until the whole piece measures 11.5″ for a really slouchy hat like I made or 8.5″ for a loose beanie.
Decrease around
Knit around for 2 rounds then bind off using the drawstring method.
Now, you could stop now and have quite the lovely hat in my opinion or you can continue on and make the brim to make it the cloche hat.
Ok, so find the middle of the front (the seam from the headband is obviously what you want for the back), face the unworked side away from you and count 15 bumps as it were… essentially 30 stitches, but for these purposes we are only thinking of the space between the bumps. Starting here pick up 30 total stitches but only using the spaces between the bumps. You are leaving the rest unworked.
Row 1: knit across
Row 2: decrease, decrease then knit across
Repeat these two rows until you have 6 stitches left on your needles, but end on a row 1 then bind off. Here I didn’t cut my yarn, but I pulled out my crochet hook to just do a quick sc border on this piece only, I didn’t go all the way around. This is completely optional, but I am a hooker at heart…
Now, after you weave in your ends, pull the long side of the piece you made over and sew on your button and that’s that!
