FO: Mattock Hat by Home Row Fiber Co

I knitted another hat - and this time it's for ME! lol

This is the just released Mattock Hat by Rochelle of Home Row Fiber Co. (the sewing community also knows her as Lucky Lucille). Rochelle released the Mattock Cowl back in March and she designed this hat to match. When she put an open call for testers on her Instagram, I decided to throw my name in the ring and she picked me :) I was pretty stoked, lol.

The Mattock Hat is a slouchy style beanie with a simple repeating texture pattern all the way around. The pattern only has 2 lines that repeat over and over, making this a really simple project that is easy to memorize. I knitted a gauge swatch before starting, but once that dried and showed it was spot on I got right to work!

The pattern lines up beautifully at the top, making for a neat and orderly center. I just love hats that do this, lol, it's the simple things, folks. I knitted my hat using a 24" circular needle, but you could easily use DPNs or a shorter circular needle (Rochelle recommends a 16"). I knitted my hat with the recommended size 7 needle and I love the gauge. It's tight enough to notice the textures, but it's loose enough to give a drapey fit and still breathe a bit. Normally my head overheats quickly with hats, but this one can stay on my head for quite a while with no built up heat.

I knitted my Mattock hat in Harvest by Feza Yarns, a worsted weight 100% merino wool that is dyed organically. I used the Citrus colorway and it's a bright lemon yellow that has just the slightest variation in the color (which I love). I won this yarn in  Facebook giveaway from Stitch Diva Studios last February, so I'm glad I have such a fun project from it. The yarn is wonderfully soft and was a pleasure to knit with. One little snag was at the very beginning of this project - when I went to wind this hank of yarn into a skein, I couldn't find the end of the yarn! I twisted, I separated, I did everything I could think of, but I was finally so frustrated with searching that I just cut a spot and started to pull from there. This was a nightmare that lead to me having to wind a ball by hand for about an hour because the hank kept knotting as I pulled, so I would have to untangle it on the swift. When I finished, I discovered why I found no end - there wasn't one! It's still the craziest thing, but when I cut my own place to start winding I fully expected to come across the actual factory ends of the yarn and need to join it back, but nope! No end. At All. So crazy. I'm glad the yarn was fun to work with because I was really not happy with it at first, lol.

Since this was a pattern test, I made sure to make it up just as written. I'll confess I was slightly skeptical about it being only one size since I have a "larger than average" head. Generally I can't buy hats in a store, and I have to make the largest size of knitted hats. This had a standard finished size of 19" around and my head is 23" around, so I was worried it wouldn't give the slouchy effect. I am very pleased I was wrong! The hat has just the right amount of casual slouch and it's super comfortable. I didn't even stretch it out in blocking - I did my usual blocking on a balloon to keep the round shape and I made sure the balloon was 19" around - but Rochelle includes great blocking instructions in the pattern so even a beginner could easily get a lovely result. The garter stitch brim is naturally quite stretchy, plus the body of the hat itself is basically a fancy ribbing, so all those knits and purls make this hat have a lot of "give", making even my large noggin fit it comfortably :)

All in all I'm thrilled with my new hat :) It's a fun design that is quick to make up and is comfy to wear - it's a triple threat! I love my new yellow hat, and I'm glad I get to share it now that the pattern is released. If you'd like to make your own Mattock Hat, head over to Ravelry and snap up the pattern for yourself! This would be a great pattern for making gifts, and I can personally vouch that it is a very detailed and well written pattern :) Thanks so much, Rochelle, for letting me test your pattern! Now I just need to make myself a Mattock Cowl to match, lol.

*I was given the Mattock Hat pattern for free to test the pattern with no obligation to blog about it. All opinions are 100% my own. I just really like this pattern :)

FO: Slouchy Moss Beanie

And now we have the final hat from Marisa's triumvirate :) This one was the wild card. She had picked a different pattern - Bothel by Tracey Todhunter - but when I went to make it I discovered that it was just a plain double crochet stitch hat. The pictures look very different, so I'm not really sure what's up there, but I just wasn't happy with the pattern. So when both the other hats were finished we had another little consultation and she picked this one.

This is the Slouch Moss Beanie by Phanessa Fong, another free pattern on Ravelry. It's a slouchy beanie knit in a moss stitch at a very loose gauge, giving it a nice texture. It also made it super stretchy, which is pretty fun and more comfy I think.

This is also made in Cascade 220 Superwash yarn, this time in the smoke gray colorway, I really like this color - a nice blue but not in your face. This yarn really worked fantastic for this style of hat - man I love 220 superwash :)

I really love this texture. I've never been a fan of knitting moss or seed stitch because I'm an English style knitter, so it's pretty tedious to change your yarn from front to back after every single stitch. Thankfully this was a small project, and while I did get a bit tired of all that moving toward the end I can't deny that it is a lovely outcome :)

Both of us agreed that this hat needed a little somethin extra, so I showed marisa the other colors of 220 superwash I have in my stash so she could pick a pom pom. In the end she settled on white. I made a 3.5" pom pom and holy cow does that take a lot of yarn! It took 11 grams just for this pom pom. Crazy. But it is a cute result.

And here's the hat's new owner, lol. Are you tired of seeing that same hill yet? This is a nice color for winter - it goes with the landscape but still stands out with its touch of more color.

So there you have it - my 3 hats that I made while I had the flu. In the end I'm really grateful I had these projects already lined up and ready to make. I don't know I could've handled a lot of decision making with my head in a fog, and the knitting really kept me from being completely miserable. So thanks, Marisa, for wanting so many hats, lol :)

FO: Bronntanas

As I said in my last post, my sister asked if I could make her a few more hats to combat the West Virginia winter. After agreeing, that project turned into 3 hats, lol. Marisa bought the yarn (during one of Craftsy's awesome supply sales) and I did the work. These 3 hats worked out to be very well timed since I got "Flu B" and basically couldn't do much of anything for over a week. This was at the end of January and these 3 hats gave me projects that were relatively simple for my flu-filled-brain to handle and I never had to be bored while hanging out on the couch :) 

To decide on patterns for hats, she gave me a general idea of what she wanted and I sent her pictures from my Ravelry library to pick from. The first design she settled on was Bronntanas by Ysolda Teague. It's a lovely cabled beanie with slouch that I've always liked, plus I've never actually made up any of Ysolda's patterns before, so this was a nice opportunity to give her a a try. 

This design has an all over cable design that comes out a kind of honey comb style. Now, the eagle eyed among you will notice that my hat seems more like stripes of cables ... and you would not be wrong, lol. I seriously had to restart this hat 3 times because I didn't pay close enough attention to the pattern, and it wasn't until I was halfway through the second cable stripe that I realized why it wasn't looking right - The cable chart has 19 rows and after the first go through of the 19 rows you are supposed to go back to row 9 and work through it again ... and I just kept going 1-19 with 4 rows stockinette in between. Whoop! I was more than halfway finished with the hat at that point, and after being so sick and frustrated with my own oversights 3 other times I was not about to redo the entire hat again. I knew Marisa wouldn't notice the difference since the main pattern is the same and that it would still look good - it's just not exactly like the pattern sample. So I just kept going! This did mean that I had to keep trying it on for length to make sure I got the required slouch.

After a thorough explanation of yarn and fiber content and heat retention and wash-ability, my sister decided she wanted these hats made of superwash wool. When Craftsy had Cascade 220 Superwash on sale for $8.50 per skein, I knew it was what we needed. I love using this yarn - it's such a work horse and always turns out nicely. Marisa decided for this particular hat to be made with the charcoal colorway and I like how it turned out. I did make sure to block the hat just to get the cables to lay nicely, and I decided to finally try blocking the hat on a balloon which worked wonderfully. It was pretty funny to keep blowing up and deflating the balloon with a tape measure around it until it was the right size, lol. Worth the effort though.

I really like the garter stitch brim on this hat and that it's looser around the face. I also really like the slight slouch it has going on. Just a casual hat with a cute pattern all over. What's not to love? Even though I didn't make it just like the pattern, I can definitely say (well, reluctantly admit is more like, lol) that my mistakes were my own fault for not reading through the pattern better. I would definitely recommend this for a cute but not difficult design.

And here is the hat in action on Marisa's  tubing trip somewhere in West Virginia. She's happy, I'm happy, and I'm no longer sick, lol. All good things. Yay for cute cabled hats!

Christmas FO: Slouchy Beanie

So I know I said back in January that I'd shared all my handmade Christmas gifts, but I kind of lied, lol. I shared all the ones I had photos of, but there were still 2 projects left - one that will be blogged soon, and this hat.

My sister, Marisa, specifically requested a hat this year. More than just that she sent me an actual pattern through Pinterest that she wanted me to make her, lol. Lucky for me it was basically the easiest crocheted hat ever. This is the Really Easy Slouchy Beanie pattern by Jennifer DiMaria. It's a free pattern, so that was an even nicer bonus. The whole hat is just double crochet with a single crochet brim. You increase out to the width you want, crochet straight, then decrease slightly and sc a few rows for a brim. That's it! So easy. This made it really easy to give my sister exactly what she wanted. Woo hoo!

Marisa requested either a black or dark red hat, so I went with Caron Simply Soft in the Autumn Red colorway. I figured the yarn would have a nice drape in this style. Being me I couldn't just follow the pattern when I disagreed with it, lol. So in the end this hat is different from the written pattern, but it still turned out slouchy. I just didn't think it was going to have enough slouch, so I added both width and length to it. We have large heads in my family (it's all the brains), so I just kept trying the hat on and adjusting to my preference. Didn't take notes though, sorry. It took about the course of one movie to make this hat, and Marisa was happy with the result :) So happy that she requested I make her more hats for the West Virginia winter (which you will see more of coming up).

And here it is on Marisa herself :) She recently went on a tubing trip and took pics of all her new hats for me. We'll have to have a chat about how to pull that slouch to the nape of the neck, lol, but other than that it looks pretty good if I do say so myself. I love the pop of color in the drab winter landscape. So I'm glad that I could give my sister just what she wanted for Christmas and have it be practical for keeping her warm too. Yay for people to make hats for!