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three big hats (& three free knitting patterns)

Here’s a very short story: a local craft store were selling their last Wool And The Gang stock at a discount, I felt compelled to bring a few balls home, knitted them up into three big hats and shared the free knitting patterns. That is all. I have a tendency to ramble, so I’ll try to keep this one short and sweet!

hat no.1 – laax

The first hat I knitted is the simplest of the bunch, because I wanted to let the colour combination shine. 1×1 rib and nice decreases were enough! All three hats are knitted in Wool and The Gang Crazy Sexy Wool, and this version uses shades Bronzed Olive, Ivory White and Mellow Mauve. It’s by far the chunkiest yarn I’ve ever used and I can’t say 12mm circulars are my favourite needles to work with, but goodness me do they work quickly. The Laax hat was complete in no time!

hat no.2 – flims

Speaking of quick knits, I finished the Flims hat from start to finish on a 90 minute flight (including calculating stitch counts, decrease patterns, and trying it on my friend Ellie about 10 times to check how it was shaping up). When I say these are speedy knits, I mean it! For hat no.2 I used Ivory White again, with scraps of a discontinued grey shade I had leftover from an old project. The textured stitch pattern looks cute and is super simple, so I’d say this one’s fairly beginner friendly too.

hat no.3 – zinal

For hat #3 I wanted to play around a little more with colour, without introducing any stranded work that would be overly bulky in such thick yarn. Hence the Zinal hat’s easy peasy slip stitch pattern to break up stripes just a teeny bit. I find pink is surprisingly versatile and I’ve already worn this hat lots – once you’ve worn such toasty headwear you feel naked without it!

As for the names? I have never visited Laax, Flims, or Zinal, but travelled to Switzerland during the same week I made these hats and thought the Swiss ski resort names sounded lovely. So there you go. All three patterns are available for free in my Ravelry store – let me know if you knit any in time for Christmas!