Tag Archives: Kristine Byrnes

Two warm hats

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We’ve had the weirdest entry into winter in recent memory here in southwest Michigan. December was the warmest on record in eons. And there was no snow. None. OK. One dawn we woke to a dusting on the lawn but it was gone with the sunrise so that doesn’t count. But snow is on the way in the coming week or so. The 1/2 inch we had last night hasn’t yet disappeared and it’s nearly noon. Plus very soon the highs will be only in the 20’s (Fahrenheit). Definitely the time to feature hats.

This first pattern is Jeanette DeVita’s Seafarer’s Beanie. It’s a freebie available through Ravelry or directly downloadable at The Seaman’s Church Institute website. I don’t think I can do better than the Institute’s website to describe itself and its mission:

Since 1898, volunteers of the Seamen’s Church Institute have knitted, collected, packed, and distributed gifts to mariners who were miles away from home during the holidays. Today, for seafarers calling on the Port Newark and Elizabeth in New Jersey, the gift consists of two hand-knitted garments, a Christmas card, and information on SCI’s services for mariners along with toiletries like hand lotion, lip balm, and toothbrushes, and individually-packaged candy or snacks. The items for the seafarers’ gifts are housed in an individual hand-sewn ditty bag, and they are delivered to the ships by SCI chaplains from the Monday before Thanksgiving through Epiphany on January 6. Mariners working on U.S. inland rivers receive a box for each boat containing handmade Christmas cards and a knit for each mariner.

The only modification I made to DeVita’s pattern was to work the double-thick earband by knitting the live stitches into the cast-on ones. Joining live stitches to a traditional cast-on is always an awkward process for me. So I used a provisional crochet cast-on. And when the time came for the join, I removed the provisional cast-on, placed the stitches on a second circular needle, and then knit the two sets of live stitches together onto my working needle. That worked well. Also, it made for a more stretchy join that helps the hat fit larger heads.

The crown decreases are super simple but very effective in making sure that the top of the hat lays flat. Allright. A digression. I know that English grammar is not a matter of consensus building. But does the top of my hat lay flat or lie flat? What I recall being drilled into me is that you lay in a bed you don’t lie in it. (Though I supposed you might speak lies in a bed also.) And you lie with your mouth and obviously don’t lay with your mouth. In search of some clarity, I consulted the Associated Press Stylebook.

AP says that “lie indicates a state of reclining along a horizontal plane and does not take a direct object.” The phrase “lay flat” has no direct object. And maybe my hat’s crown is sort of in a state of reclining along a horizontal plane. Do you think? The past tense of lie in the reclining sense is “lay.” That’s way too much for my head. AP acknowledges that “lie” means speaking an untruth. Clarity has not been achieved. So let me try this again. The super simple crown decreases make sure the top of the hat doesn’t come to a point.

I knit my first Seafarer’s Beanie in Plymouth Yarns Galway Worsted. It’s such a reliable workhorse wool. And it’s available at a decent price point in lots of colorways. For my second knit of this pattern I chose Kelbourne Woolens Germantown. Great wool yarn. Not such a great price point though. Many fewer colorways but every one is a winner.

This teal version has been getting a lot of favorites on Ravelry since I posted it. Maybe that’s just because I offered the tip about starting with a provisional cast-on. It’s such a reliably great pattern. Both hats were selected from this year’s Pick-Your-Gift in an early round. Here’s the beanie laying flat. Or is it maybe lying flat?

Next up is another Seaman’s Church Institute freebie: Kristine Byrnes’s 1898 Hat. Here’s a direct link to the pdf on the Institute’s website if you’d rather go that route. (Let’s not start on the subject of singular possessives with names ending in an “s.”)

My skein of Lamb’s Pride Alaskan Sea must have been a bit short on the yardage. So I used an oddment of Orange You Glad Lamb’s Pride to add in some stripes. I’m very pleased with how that worked out.

This is a great whirligig crown decreases that behaves itself well.

If you haven’t knit this hat before you’ll be surprised about how its earband is knit. Here’s a teaser: that’s not an I-cord at the bottom edge. And both the inside and the outside of the double thick earband are knit flat at the same time. Totally clever.

A lot of knitters have found that the earband works best if it’s knit on a smaller size needle than the body of the hat. I used US size 7 for the earband and size 9 for the body. Major pumpkin-heads may find this hat’s a tad snug. Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride can stand up to size 10 needles and that might work better for the big heads among us, including me.

To quote a famous piggie “Th-Th-The, Th-Th-The, Th-Th… That’s all, folks!” Welcome to 2024!

More hats

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The major season of hat-knitting is upon us! I knit hats year-round. But from now until spring, they finally start disappearing from my finished knits stash.

This first hat is Tanya Thoman’s (of Maybea Crafted’s) excellent design, Munising. I purchased the kit from Thoman at the Tip of the Mitt Fiber Festival at the Emmet County Fairgrounds in Petoskey Michigan. What a great venue for a yarnie event. The yarn is Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport. The kit had plenty of yarn, in each color.

Munising is near the Pictured Rock National Lakeshore. The Lake Superior shore is home to amazing sandstone cliffs. Streaks of minerals stain the face of the weather-sculpted sandstone when groundwater oozes out of cracks and trickles down the rock face. Iron (red and orange), copper (blue and green), manganese (brown and black), and limonite (white) are among the most common color-producing minerals. The cliffs near Munising inspired this hat’s design.

Pictured Rocks is an amazing feature of our “Pure Michigan.” Plan a visit if you can and be sure to include a visit to some of the many waterfalls around Munising (the city).

Munising (the hat) also has colorful swirling crown.

Shifting gears completely, next up is the popular Ravelry freebie, Ditto. It’s designed by Anne Gagnon. I’ve knit it before. This time I pinked it up with a sweet shade of 7 Veljesta by Novita.

Ditto’s crown is stunningly beautiful but easily knit.

And how could I not knit a second Ditto soon after the pink one? Ditto’s pattern name, not to mention how pretty it is, calls for a second knit. I used Sugarbush Bold, a discontinued yarn whose passing I continue to mourn.

If you’re looking for a fun quick knit that yields great results give Ditto a try. Or two tries. It’s totally worth it.

Next up is the 1898 Hat. It’s a free pattern available via Ravelry or direct from Seaman’s Church Institute’s website. The mission of the institute is provide services to the maritime community. For many decades that has included a Christmas at Sea program. The Institute’s website says the program is one of the “oldest and longest continuously-running charter knitting program in the U.S.” It delivers knitted gifts to the “thousands of professional U.S. mariners at work aboard towboats, harbor tugs, and dredges on the Mississippi River system and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterways” as well as to certain international seafarers. Maybe knit one for your ears and send another to warm a mariners’.

The 1898 Hat is Kristine Byrnes’s winning design in the Institute’s contest looking for hats with earflaps. This hat’s earflaps are the best earflaps ever–amazingly warm, double thick.

We probably can say aloud that this hat is not for the fashionistas among us. But if you’re a person with ears you should definitely considering knitting, wearing, and gifting this hat. I knit this one in Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride worsted.

The 1898 Hat is said to be inspired by a pattern that Byrnes found in a magazine published around 1910. Demonstrating that I am an incorrigible knitpicker, I admit that I wonder why it isn’t called the 1910 Hat.

My next knit is Jo-Anne Klim’s Totalee Slouchy hat. If you’re interested in checking out my five prior knits of this hat, type misspelled Totallee into the search window and they’ll show up. Klim’s versions are very dignified. My versions tend to the wild side and this version is the wildest yet.

It’s knit in Ella Rae’s Cozy Soft Prints, a DK weight. That’s the yarn in the body of the hat. And the brim is knit in Schachenmayr Merino Extrafine 120. I’d knit a A Bunny Named Quwi in this Ella Rae yarn…

…and this Totallee Slouchy project was designed to use up the remainder. An excellent bunny, methinks, and an interesting hat.

The crown decreases work out into a very pleasing swirl. Kind of a kaleidoscope effect in this difficult-to-tame yarn.

This post has definitely gotten my knit-a-hat juices flowing. So has a few 40 degree mornings!

Classic Ravelry freebie hats

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This is Kristine Byrnes’s 1898 Hat. I first put this hat into my queue in…in…possibly closer to 1898 than 2021. Byrnes explains that the pattern is inspired by a photo of a hat pictured in a magazine that was published around 1910. Odd details sometimes trouble me about pattern naming. And that leads me to ask why this isn’t the 1910 Hat. But my brain on fiber fumes is an unruly thing.

This is a great pattern. Truly. It’s double garter stitch over the ears. So this is a very warm hat. The pattern calls for worsted weight. That’s what I used. I knit this one in Stonehedge Fiber Shepherd’s Wool in the Aurora colorway.

Here’s a look at the well-behaved crown decreases.

Off-head it looks a tad squat. That’s an illusion. It’s just a deep head-hugger.

The construction is clever. Before I knit the hat, I assumed that was an applied i-Cord edge at the bottom of the hat. It isn’t. Possibly I should just leave it that and entice you to download this freebie and give it a test drive. But Byrnes provides the reveal in her Ravelry pattern page description. The edges of the headband, that is the part that fits around the head and over the ears, are folded together along a slip stitch seam. Then the edges are knit together as you move from the garter stitch section to working in the round for the stockinette section. So what seems to be i-Cord is actually a slip stitch section running through the flat section of the garter stitch.

I finished my first 1898 and immediately started a second one.

This one I knit in a yarn that’s new to me: Novita 7 Veljesta Solid. Before returning to 1898, my apologies to any Finnish speakers I’ve offended. The yarn name has what I know as an umlaut above the “a” in Veljesta. I have no idea how to type an umlaut on my keyboard. So think “:” over that last “a,” but with the dots cozying up to one another, flipped over sideways. I hope leaving off the umlaut hasn’t said something naughty. Veljesta is an interesting 75% wool/25% nylon mix. I highly recommend the yarn. It has the warmth of wool, with nylon for strength, and was great to work with.

Back to 1898. My first one was a tad small for an adult. FeltHead’s head size is smaller than Glassheads. And I wanted to fiddle and flatten the crown decrease just a tad. So this time I added 2 rows to the ear flaps and 4 rows (or thereabouts) to the front. I ended up picking up 93 stitches–a few more than the pattern directs. Basically, you need to pick up a stitch for every furrow in the garter stitch. I reduced the stitches down to 91 in the first round. Then, in the decrease section, I started out with K11, K2tog across the round. I knit 2 rows after the first 3 decreases, and 1 row after the next 2 decreases, and then I decreased each round. The resultant crown turned out a bit more round than in my first version.

If I can just find 2021 heads who like this 1898/1910 look, these hats will be popping off my needles like crazy.

One thing that occured to me (and I’m not the first)? Just stopping after the headband and stitching the edges together makes for a great headband. This past winter…oh, wait, it still seems to be winter in the north country…this winter lots ‘o folks were asking me for headbands.

This next Ravelry classic is really a Purl Soho classic. It’s Garter Earflap Hat. Every newborn I’ve encountered in the last several years has almost gotten one of these hats. I finally knit one.

I had one ancient skein of Nautika, an Aran-weight by Knit One, Crochet Too. The pattern calls for Aran weight. So I was off to the races. More than 11,000 Ravelers have project pages on the site with their version of this cutie. Except for the Pixie top, it’s got a bit of 1898 going. Obviously the earflaps are much less exaggerated.

The pattern is easy, but oddly written–especially in the short row sections. After you set the markers and work the first set of short rows, you are wrapping the stitch after the divide/space in your row. I’m not sure why the directions on that are a bit garbled.

There are also quite a few questions that arise around the double decrease directions. What I did, which worked well, was to put a removable marker at the first double decreases. Then vertical rows of stockinette make it clear where you work the decrease: slip the stitch before the vertical row and the vertical row stitch, knit the next stitch, then pass the two slipped stitches over the knit stitch.

It’s such a sweet thing. And I think the bright topper was a great finish.

Garter Earflap Hat is sized from infant to large adult. If there are large adults out there wearing this hat I don’t think they’ve made their way into Montmorency County, Michigan yet. But babies? Babies pretty much let you put anything on their heads especially if it doesn’t have chin ties. They will look so cute in this one!