Anddddd… welcome back to my Project Knitwear series, where I’m documenting my journey into the world of knitting my own clothes! This time, it’s the first post in a two-parter (big wow!), because I’m tackling the Season Set by Ullen Knitwear: a wintery, cabled hat and mitten duo. In today’s post, we’ll be focusing on the Season Hat. Let’s get into it, shall we?

Table of Contents

• The Pattern
• The Yarn
• The Knitting Process
  • Italian Cast On
  • Cables
  • Decreases
  • Sizing
• Techniques
• Final Thoughts

The Pattern

I haven’t made many hats before (read: I’ve made exactly 2, and both were samples for my Pumpkin Strange Brew Sweater, so I was less concerned with the hat itself and more concerned with the yarn/colourwork pattern), so I didn’t really know what to expect going into this pattern.

In light of that, I do have to say that I probably wouldn’t recommend this particular pattern for a beginner hat knitter: there are definitely some clearer, simpler hat patterns out there that would make a better starting point!

There are two main things to keep in mind if you’re planning to use this pattern:

• The sizing

For both the hat and the mittens, only two different sizes are supplied and the only difference between those sizes is the needle size you use (i.e. the gauge of your work). I would have loved to see a larger size range and a stitch-count based variation, because I’m quite picky about how my gauge looks and I feel this would have made the pattern more versatile/easier to work with, particularly for less confident knitters.

• The yardage

I ran into this problem before when I was making the jumper from the Atlantis Set from Ullen Knitwear: the yardage given in this pattern is for BOTH the hat and the mittens (they are not given separately). This means that if you want to make only the hat, you don’t know exactly how much yarn you’ll need (and vice versa, for the mittens). Luckily, I was making both this time around, so I didn’t have to worry about that.

The Yarn

I have been desperate to try Knitting for Olive‘s Compatible Cashmere for a while now, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it because of the price! I finally bit the bullet and decided to use it for this project, though, because I figured it was a good way of trying it out: a small knit (which means a small required yardage), where warmth & softness is a top priority, and something that looks a little fancy and can live up to that cashmere name.

For this hat, then, I used one strand of Knitting for Olive‘s Merino, held together with one strand of Compatible Cashmere. I chose the shade ‘Dusty Dove Blue’, which is a bit of a departure from my usual colour palette (I tend to favour warmer, autumnal shades), but I think it will go really well with my fancy winter coat (it’s a black/grey/white plaid situation).

For the set (i.e. hat and mittens), I purchased 2 x 50g balls of the Merino and 3 x 25g balls of the Compatible Cashmere.

The Knitting Process

This was a slightly trickier knit than I expected it to be: I was hoping for a quick, simple knit and it was… anything but!

Italian Cast On

I encountered a problem as soon as I began with this project: the Italian Cast On! This was a new cast on for me and I found it pretty tricky. It took me a few tries to get it right (I found it really helped to set it up on straight needles, then switch to circular needles afterwards to knit the hat) and, if I’m being honest, the finish isn’t as neat as I would have liked for something that was so fiddly to set up!

I think for the mittens I will try a different cast on (maybe the alternating cable cast on?) and see if I like that a bit better (and find it easier to work!).

Cables

In general, I love the way cables look, but I have to admit… I just don’t love working them! I find them pretty fiddly and time-consuming, but I keep finding myself drawn to cabled projects because of how pretty and cosy they make things look.

The cables in this pattern aren’t super crazy, but they’re a little more complex than your typical 2×2 twists. I didn’t particularly enjoy working them but, again, I do like how they look, so I guess it’s worth it? I just wish I could find a love of cabling to rival my love of cables…

Decreases

My main struggle with this hat came with the decreases: I could not work out how they were supposed to fit into the pattern (and, honestly, I’m still not sure I did it right— actually, I’m pretty sure I did not do it right). Truthfully, I was baffled throughout the whole of the decrease section, right up to the end of the hat— this could 100% be a result of my inexperience, but I’d love to see some more detailed instructions for that section in the pattern to really help guide you through it, because it is tricky to juggle the cables and decreases.

The hat does have a bit of a ‘point’ at the top: it’s not so noticeable when you wear it, but it’s more prominent when it’s off (and it was very noticeable before I blocked it). I wonder if increasing the frequency of the decreases towards the top would help this?

Finally, within the pattern, the decreases are written as ‘d1r’ (I assume, ‘decrease 1 right’) and ‘d1l’ (‘decrease 1 left’?). This terminology is not used in the abbreviations/explanations section, instead, SSK and K2tog is listed. I had to do a quick bit of googling to figure out which one was which (for reference, SSK = d1l and K2tog = d1r) and I used those decreases throughout.

Sizing

The sizing was a big issue for me with this project! As I mentioned, there are only two sizes supplied (and the only difference in the pattern between those two was 0.5mm in needle size). I ended up making the smaller hat (Size 1), because a) my head circumference is within the range for that size (admittedly towards the higher limit, but still within the range!) and b) I tend to prefer the appearance of a tighter gauge to a looser one.

However… the finished hat is a little small on me. It fits, but it’s not super cosy and it rides up a little bit. Plus, I blocked it on a head mannequin (let’s not even get into that) and I think it stretched it out slightly (so it’s not just me having a big head! Woohoo!), so the gauge (even on the smaller needle size) is quite loose and open, which makes it even less cosy. Overall, if I made this hat again, I’d definitely play around with the sizing.

Techniques

There were a couple of new techniques to me in this pattern, as well as some opportunities to practise techniques I’ve previously met (as always, previously encountered techniques are marked with an *):

• Italian cast on
• 5-stitch cables
• SSK & K2tog*

Final Thoughts

I went into this project with the false impression that it would be a simple, quick and easy knit. Alas, it was much more challenging than I expected and I didn’t enjoy the process quite as much as I had hoped to!

This is one of those projects where you know you’ll wear it and you love how it looks from afar, but up close it’s full of little things you wish you did differently. I wonder if, in the future, once I’ve got a bit more experience knitting hats, cables and decreases, I could come back to this pattern with more confidence and make a hat I’m happier with?

Nonetheless, I love the colour of this hat and I do love the general, cable-y vibe, so I’m excited to wear it throughout the festive season! Stay tuned for Part 2 of the Season Set, where I make the matching mittens!

If you're interested...

You can purchase the Season Set pattern by Ullen Knitwear on Ravelry here.

You can find the Ravelry project page for my Season Set here.

Gemma

xxx

The first stage of any knitting project is swatching (sigh), because it’s important to test out gauge, yarns and colours (so I’m told). In the Strange Brew book, there is a pattern for a colourwork hat called the Anthology Hat. The pattern even suggests that you treat the hat as your ‘swatch’, thereby testing out both the yarn and your gauge AND being left with a wearable item by the end of it. As someone who quite literally despises swatching, this seemed like a great plan for me! So, in swatching for my soon-to-be Pumpkin Strange Brew Sweater, I made two colourwork hats (hence why this is Project Knitwear #6.5— technically, these are wearable knits, but they’re not the knitwear item I have lined up for the next instalment). In this post, I’ll be giving you all the details for both hats, chatting about my experience making them AND talking you through my final colour/yarn choices for my sweater.

Table of Contents

• The Pattern
• Hat #1: King Cole Merino Blend
  • Mini Review: King Cole Merino Blend 4 Ply
  • Hat #1 as a Swatch: Thoughts
• Hat #2: Scheepjes Metropolis
  • Mini Review: Scheepjes Metropolis
  • Hat #2 as a Swatch: Thoughts
• Ladderback Jacquard Technique
• To Pom, or Not To Pom
• New Techniques
• Final Thoughts (and Final Colour Decisions)

The Pattern

As I mentioned, I used the Anthology Hat pattern by Tin Can Knits. This is a simple, customisable hat pattern, that features a ribbed brim and a large, plain section for colourwork. For both hats, I made the size ‘Adult SM‘ and followed the instructions for sock weight yarn (the pattern also provides instructions for Aran and DK weight yarns). I opted for a regular (not fold-over brim) and used an amalgamation of the charts provided by Tiny Human Knits on Ravelry for the colourwork section.

I followed the chart above (my amalgamation of the originals), then followed rows 1-4 of Chart 4 (from Tiny Human Knits).

Because I wanted a little more of the cream shade at the top of the hat than I had space for in my colourwork section, I kept knitting with the cream shade for the first 3 rows of the crown decreases on both hats, before switching back to the brown shade and finishing off the hats.

On her Ravelry project page, Tiny Human Knits suggests using the Ladderback Jacquard Technique for the colourwork. This is a technique I’ve never come across before, so I thought I could give it a go when making these hats, to practise ahead of the larger (more intimidating) sweater project.

Hat #1: King Cole Merino Blend

For my first hat, I used King Cole Merino Blend 4 Ply (which is curiously also known as King Cole Anti-Tickle Merino Blend 4 Ply), a 75% merino/25% nylon fingering weight yarn, in the following shades:

• Chocolate (023)
• Cinnamon (3298)
• Aran (046)
• Willow (3942)

I knit the hat on 3.5mm needles (2.75mm for the ribbing) and used a basic, long tail cast-on. This cast-on wasn’t the best choice- truthfully, I really thought it was a stretchy cast-on, but apparently that is not the case! This hat’s definitely a little tight along the cast-on edge, but I guess we live and learn. I also added a pom pom to the top of this hat (more on that later— see ‘To Pom or Not To Pom‘).

For the colourwork section of this hat, I followed my amalgamated colour chart, but only did 1 plain brown row (instead of 2) between the chevron pattern and the pumpkins, and the pumpkins and the top white pattern, respectively. I increased the size of these stripes in Hat #2, because I thought the pattern looked a little cramped in this one.

Mini Review: King Cole Merino Blend 4 Ply

Overall, I liked this yarn. I thought it worked up really neatly in the colourwork sections and doesn’t have much of a ‘halo’ (which I like). It is a soft yarn, but it’s not the softest I’ve used. I also found that the thickness (squidgy-ness?) of the knitted material drastically reduced after blocking, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I did find it a little disappointing at the time.

There’s a pretty good range of colours available for this yarn, but, unfortunately, it didn’t quite have all of the shades I wanted for this project. I purchased this yarn from Wool Warehouse, at £3.89 per 50g ball, so it is a pretty affordable option, which is good to know!

Hat #1 as a Swatch: Thoughts

My main takeaway from this swatch was that the colours weren’t quite what I was looking for: the orange was a little too bright, the brown a little too dark and the cream a little too white. The combination just felt ever so slightly too in-your-face (dare I say, garish…?) for the sweater.

I did go back and look at the colour options for the King Cole yarn, but, as I mentioned, it just didn’t have the slightly more muted, warmer colours that I was looking for, so I had to broaden my search a little. That led me to Scheepjes, which, in turn, led to…

Hat #2: Scheepjes Metropolis

I found some great-looking shades in Scheepjes Metropolis (another fingering weight, 75% merino/25% nylon blend yarn), so I decided to make a second swatch-hat using that instead. For the new hat, I used the following shades of Metropolis:

• Valencia (062)
• Mumbai (068)
• Liverpool (065)
• Vancouver (028)

Just like with Hat #1, I knit this project on 3.5mm needles (2.75mm for the ribbing). However, I used a German Twisted Cast-On for this project, which made the cast-on edge a lot stretchier— much better for a hat!

For the colourwork, I followed my amalgamated chart exactly (i.e. with 2 plain rows above and below the pumpkin motifs). This did mean that my colourwork section was slightly longer, but I have a relatively big head (sigh), so that’s no problem.

Mini Review: Scheepjes Metropolis

Okay, not to be dramatic, but I’m kind of obsessed with this yarn. It’s SO soft. Truly, I was trying to describe to my mum what this yarn felt like to knit with and the only fitting adjective I could come up with was ‘buttery’. It’s a buttery yarn. It’s ever so slightly heathered, but not in a dramatic way at all- more of a solid-colours-with-a-little-more-dimension kind of way. It was really good for colourwork and blocked nicely I feel like it didn’t thin out quite as much as the King Cole.

Again, though, the colour range caused me problems— there are so many shades that I thought I had hit the jackpot, but some colours have very few options (e.g. brown, which is a big problem for this project) and others have lots of variations, but no ‘neutral’ option, if that makes sense (I’m thinking about a nice, basic cream shade here!).

Hat #2 as a Swatch: Thoughts

I was SO confident as I was knitting this— I truly thought I’d stumbled on the perfect yarn for this project, but now I’m just… not so sure. First and foremost, I’m just not a fan of Vancouver (the green shade). It feels very lurid to me, particularly alongside the other, more muted colours. I’m also not crazy about the cream shade I chose (Mumbai)— it actually has little specks of a kind of… hot pink shade in it? So in some lights it looks cream (which I want!) and in others it looks pink (which I don’t want!). I LOVE the pumpkin shade (Liverpool), and I think the brown is more what I was after than the King Cole version, but when I look at them together, the hat just looks a little… muted to me? I feel like there’s not enough contrast between the brown and orange shades, which I think is important for this design. I’m disappointed, because I really thought this yarn/colour combo was THE one, but I guess it’s back to the drawing board a little bit in terms of colours.

Ladderback Jacquard Technique

So, as I mentioned, Tiny Human Knits recommends using the Ladderback Jacquard Technique for carrying the floats in the colourwork sections of the sweater, because often there are large stretches between the different colours in the chart. This is a technique I’d never heard of before (I’m not particularly experienced at colourwork), so I figured it would be a good idea to give the technique I try while I made my swatch-hats.

Weirdly, I really enjoyed this technique— I didn’t find it too tricky (once you’ve set up the ladderback stitches, you’re away!) and I always worry about carrying the floats loosely enough, so it definitely helped to ease some of my colourwork anxiety. In fact, for the first hat, I think it went really well for me— I didn’t make any mistakes (that went unnoticed and uncorrected, at least) and I think it looks really neat from both the right and wrong sides of the work. I actually enjoyed the whole process— I flew through it!

With the second hat… I got a little cocky. I became weirdly obsessed with finishing the second hat as quickly as possible, so I was definitely rushing, which probably didn’t help the situation. If you look closely, you can see a rogue ladderback stitch that I forgot was a ladderback stitch and promptly knit as a regular stitch, increasing my overall stitch count and interrupting my colourwork pattern. The worst part is that it was in the lurid green shade! Sigh. Moral of the story: don’t rush colourwork. I will definitely be remembering that when I make my jumper!

To Pom, or Not To Pom

When I made Hat #1, I was fresh-faced and optimistic, so I envisaged the final hat with a big, multicolour pom pom on top, containing all four of the colours used in the hat itself. With the help of one of my handy bobble makers (the blue one (which I believe is 8.5cm), from this pack), I made the pom pom of my dreams, then promptly remembered all the woes that pom poms bring with them. Why are they never actually secure? Why are threads always falling out even though I tied them TIGHT with ALL my strength AND ran a needle through them? Why are they never as big and puffy as I dream they will be? Why do I have to trim off half the pom pom to get it looking like a pom pom? Why do I have to have the skills of an award-winning hair stylist to trim it and keep it round? Sigh. Pom poms. I love them in theory, and I love how they look, but they drive me insane.

Anyway, I made the pom pom for Hat #1 using all 4 colours that I used in the hat: brown, orange, cream and green. To make sure the colours were evenly distributed throughout the pom pom, I held all 4 strands (one of each colour) together as I wrapped it, so there were no patches of colour (this also had the added benefit of making the process a lot quicker, which was a win).

To attach the pom pom to the hat, I used a trick my mum taught me: using a button on the inside. This is great because it means you can easily remove and reattach the pom pom at any point, so the hat can still be washed (without a pom pom massacre), or, if you’re not feeling particularly frivolous one day, you can go pom-less. To do this, you just thread the ends of the pom pom through the top of the hat, from the outside to the inside. Next, you thread those ends through a large button (on the inside of the hat, still), pull them tight, then tie them to each other. This keeps the pom pom secure on top of the hat, but makes it super easy to remove it when needed. And, before you ask— no, you cannot feel the button (unless you have no hair, in which case, you kind of can and I apologise for that).

As I was making Hat #2, I was already starting to dread making another pom pom. It was only once I finished the hat that I remembered not every hat has a pom pom, and, seeing as this was my hat, the decision was entirely up to me! Wow, isn’t free will just great? Anyway, I left this hat pom-less, which I think suits it more sophisticated, muted colour palette anyway (or so I tell myself).

New Techniques

As this is (technically) a Project Knitwear post, I wanted to document the techniques that I used while making these hats: both the new techniques, that I tried for the first time, and the ones I’ve met before, but had an opportunity in this project to practise (as always, previously encountered techniques are marked with an *):

• Long tail cast-on*
• German twisted cast-on*
• Ladderback Jacquard colourwork technique
• Following a colourwork chart*
• Colourwork in the round*

Final Thoughts (and Final Colour Decisions)

Overall, I enjoyed making these hats. It was great practising the Ladderback Jacquard technique (even if I did get a little ahead of myself with it) and I did really enjoy knitting the colourwork sections. It’s not something I’d want to do all the time (it’s much harder to watch TV and knit when you’re working with colours!), but it is pretty addictive and SO rewarding.

Weirdly enough, these are actually my first ever knitted hats! They were so quick and easy to make, so I don’t think they’ll be my last. I really liked following the Anthology ‘recipe’ by Tin Can Knits- even though it felt a little overwhelming at first to have so much creative control, it definitely opens up a whole world of hat-related possibilities!

In terms of my final yarn/colour decisions for my Pumpkin Strange Brew Sweater (aka the reason we’re all actually here), I had to do a little bit more testing and trialling before I found a combination that I was happy with. In the end, I’ve settled on a combination of 3 different yarn brands (because I’m a very minimal person, evidently):

• Yarnsmiths Merino Sock, in the shade Rich Brown (2K079)
• Scheepjes Metropolis, in the shade Liverpool (065)
• King Cole Merino Blend 4 Ply, in the shades Aran (046) and Willow (3942)

The brown was the shade I was struggling the most with, until I remembered that I had a ball of the Yarnsmiths leftover from another project (which you will eventually be seeing!). Sure enough, the Rich Brown colourway was EXACTLY the warm, mid-brown shade I was looking for, plus the yarn has the exact same composition (75% merino/25% nylon) as the other two yarns, so everything worked out perfectly! The contrast between the new brown shade and the Scheepjes orange shade is much better, so I’ll be using that yarn for the pumpkins/orange sections of the pattern. With the warmer brown shade, the cream King Cole shade looks a little less white, so it’ll be perfect for my sweater. Alongside the other yarns, the original King Cole shade of green works perfectly— it’s not too lurid, but brings a nice touch of leafy green to the pattern.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading all about my hat-swatch adventures! I’ve ordered all the yarn for my Pumpkin Strange Brew Sweater, so (fingers crossed) that post should be coming to the blog later on this season! If you want to be notified as soon as it goes live, you can subscribe to my newsletter!

If you're interested...

You can find the Anthology Hat pattern here.

You can find the Ravelry project page for the Strange Brew Pumpkin sweater by Tiny Human Knits here.

You can find my Ravelry project page for Hat #1 (King Cole) here.

You can find my Ravelry project page for Hat #2 (Scheepjes) here.

Gemma

xxx