Hat Project

This past weekend my cousin got married. I wanted to give her and her new husband alpaca hats. They are outdoorsy people, who enjoy things like winter camping. I figured they would get use out of these unique hand made hats.

I decided I needed a new hat pattern for these hats. We have made pixie hats, but found these are hard to make in adult size. I couldn't find exactly what I wanted in a pattern, so I created my own. I used ideas from several different hat patterns, but only used very small portions that way. The majority of the pattern for these hats was my own creation.

I wanted to use contrasting yarn for these hats, to make them a matching set. I decided to use Greyt's yarn, a beautiful rose grey. For the contrast, I used a mix of Greyt and Tehya's yarn. To give a bit of background on these alpacas, Tehya was born on our farm the first year we had alpacas. I saw her birth from beginning to end. I have seen Tehya grow up from the time she was born until now, as a 3.5 year old young lady. She is now bred to Greyt, our herdsire. Greyt came to us as a two year old. He was already a young man when we met him. This year Greyt is bred to Tehya. I can't wait to see that cria!!

In a way this story of our alpacas mirrors the wedding of my cousin, whom I have known since she was born, and her now husband who we only just now met.



First I cast on and knit the ear flaps (I love ear flap hats). Then I cast on the entire hat, with the ear flaps knit in:



I wanted to put some stripes in the hats, so they would contrast each other:





Now it's starting to look like a hat:



and:



What was most exciting about these hats is they seem to really be a One Size Fits All. At our house we have a variety of size heads. We believe Emma and I have normal size, J and Zack have over sized (as a toddler Zack needed a man's XXL size hat, oh and he had to have a head scan done because his head was so big it was off the charts - no worries, he's perfectly healthy, just has a really big head). We all could put on this hat and felt like it fit great. The knit purl pattern is perfect for giving it stretch to those who need it. Some other pattern hats I've made were not versatile like this. I hope they fit the recipients well.