This fun top-down hat has you working a little bit of a lot of different techniques, but none of them last long enough to take you around the bend. A pinhole cast-on, a bit of Entrelac, a lateral braid or two, some stranded colorwork, tassels and a pom-pom, oh, and a little stockinette stitch will keep you engaged right to the end. Plus, for all the Noro junkies in the world, there’s plenty of color to play with. Additionally, there is the great fun of German Short Row. GSR is one of my very favorite techniques, and one whose glories I want to spread abroad to every knitter as it is intuitive, elegant, easy to work and looks absolutely fabulous!

Standard wrap-and-turn short rowing always left me cold, with wraps that buried themselves at the base of the stitch and required digging out to incorporate. The extra yarn wrapped around the stitch left an inevitable loop on that back after picking up the wraps, which seriously offended my inner Anal Knitter. German Short Row doesn’t introduce any extra yarn into the piece, but instead pulls up a stitch from the previous row, actually shortening the stitch rather than introducing more yarn.