Smoothie hat

Now that spring is finally arriving in Finland, it's time to publish the last beanie pattern of the winter. This light weight beanie knitted with fingering weight yarn is just the thing to cover your ears in the last cold winds of the winter.

What: Smoothie / Own pattern

How: Circular needle 3.5 mm

From: Qing Fibre Supersoft Sock, 33 g

Last year at the Jyväskylä summer knit festival, I bought a skein of this beautiful, fluffy pink yarn. It was one of those "Oh, I have no idea what I'm going to make but I need this delicious skein" purchases.

I had the feeling the yarn would work nicely as a cabled beanie. I was in the mood to design a hat with a garter stitch edge and the cables are just enough to keep the knitting interesting while letting the pretty yarn shine.

The decreases are worked between the cables and create a beautiful crown - which I of course covered with the pompom. Luckily, you can see pics without a pompom by my test knitters on Ravelry.

I haven't really hopped on the whole fake fur bandwagon. But then, I found these amazing alpaca pompoms at Toft booth at Edinburgh Yarn Fest. All the pompoms were a bit different and you could select one for your liking. I went with this smallish (compared to the others!) white pompom.

We took photos of the hat during Easter and now I can't shake the association that this is the Easter bunny's fluffy tail.

You can find the pattern on Ravelry. It has two sizes. And, you can get it -25% with the code PoMPoM until the end of the week.

Helmi hat

Let's start going through the patterns one at a time.

What: Helmi / Own pattern

How: 3.0 and 4.0 mm circular needle

From: Tukuwool Fingering, 76 g

Let's start at the beginning. So, I had the idea of designing a collection of knitwear for Tukuwool yarn. And the first design I conjured was a cabled hat.

First of all, the hat was to have a tall folded brim because my main priority in the winter is to keep my ears from freezing. Second, the hat was to have cables with moss stitch inside them. And third, the hat was definitely going to have a pom pom. That's how Helmi hat came to be.

After the folded brim there are some cables and you decrease part of the stitches while knitting the cables. The rest of the hat is reverese stockinette stitch because I feel it let's the cables shine. You could work garter stitch but let's face it, garter stitch in the round is a bit blah.

And finally, there's a pom pom to top it off. You can never have too many pom poms, right? I still haven't managed to buy a pom pom maker so I still cut out one from cardboard as they taught us in kindergarden.

The best thing about the hat is how cute it makes you look. Even if I don't think I look too shabby, I rarely glance in the mirror and think I'm super cute. But this hat makes me do that! So keep your ears warm and get cute - all in one hat. There are two sizes and you can make them with two skeins of Tukuwool.

The amazing pics are by Miika. And here's a link to the KAL in Ravelry.