In August 2017, my husband and I, along with two friends, set off on an epic road trip across America. We drove from San Francisco to New York, crossing four time zones, seventeen states (as well as Washington DC, so that’s eighteen territories all together), and notching up three thousand, eight hundred and ninety-four miles along the way.

My husband had set me a little challenge for the trip: I was to cast on a hat in San Francisco, and cast it off in New York, so that its genesis spanned our entire trip. This then, is a hat that literally has been dragged across America!

It is deliberately designed to be a loose-fitting, comfortable hat—roomy enough that it doesn’t in any way feel restrictive—and is made up of a structural and chunky lace texture, with diagonal lines sweeping up the sides of its body. The two halves of the hat feature bold, diamond-like leaf shapes, causing the lines of decreases to swerve and mould themselves to its changing directions: first outwards, then inwards, breathing in, then out, like the very geography we drove through on our odyssey from coast to coast.

Chunky, and quick to knit, you’ll dash this one off the needles in no time, and you’ll be sporting your own Dragged Across America hat before you know it!