Lately it’s (almost) all hats all the time. I’m incentivized, as you’ll see at the end of this post. This is “Off-the-Cup Caps for Kids,” an Effectiveness by Design pattern by Michele Wyman. The pattern provides three variations and this is the spiral design. It was a “go to” pattern for me when my son was young and I haven’t knit it in ages. I used Lorna’s Laces Shepard Sport, but double-stranded it. The bow on top is a minor modification of mine. With 8 stitches left, I knit two 4-stitch I-cords.

It’s always a surprise to me to see how this:

Turns into a most unexpected this:

You’ve met Vogue Knitting’s Pompom Hat before on this blog. It’s back, jazzed up this time in Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Worsted in RPM Pink. Using a worsted, even though this is a beefy one, down-sized it to fit a child.

The cables are great fun and look and feel totally cozy. But I also think that the seed-stitch back is a great touch.

This next one is Robin Melanson’s Hugs and Kisses Cabled Hat, from her hat and mitten set published in Tanis Gray’s “Cozy Knits: 50 Fast and Easy Projects by Top Designers,” published by Interweave.

I also knit this in Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Worsted (Lotus Pink) rather than in the bulky weight called for in the pattern. Again, the point was to downsize for a young one.

And this next cutie has a story to tell of knitting perseverance. But I’d not have been able to pull it off without the designer, Cynthia Spencer, having gone the extra mile and without Ravelry being available as support for our communication.

This is a two-color, one-pompom, no-top-tassle, modification of Spencer’s Cabled Earflap Hat included in “60 Quick Knits From America’s Yarn Shops.” It’s a Sixth and Spring Books publication. The errata are starting to pour in from the many corners of the knitting world on this book. I’d link to it, but for the last few days the website has been down. Spencer’s corrections hadn’t made it to the errata list as of about a week ago, though.

The pattern is correct except for the chart that is the body of the hat. I wouldn’t have been able to figure it out if Spencer hadn’t been so generous as to email me the chart she provided to the editors. She gave them line-by-line instructions too, but they only printed the chart and only after shrinking it down so small as to assure these senior eyes could barely read it. Well, that’s an old story and Sixth and Spring can’t be faulted for that any more than any other publisher can be. So, as for that chart–here’s the skinny:

Knit rounds 1 and 2. Then flip the chart upside down and start reading it backwards and knit rounds 23, 22, 21…and so on..down to round 3. Except when you get to round 17, 15 and 7 and 5 (reading the lines with their original chart labels, that is, upside down), reverse the 3-ST RPC and 3-ST LPC cables so that you switch the positioning of the 3rd and 4th set of cable crosses in each of the two halves of the figure eight.

Sigh. And then twirl around three times, shout “Callooh! Callay!” and chortle in your joy because once you knit the hat that Spencer entrusted to the publisher to print, you’ll have a great hat. Mine is knit in Cascade 220 Superwash Worsted.

About being incentivized to knit these hats? Isn’t this just the best incentive ever?