The hat is lightweight and comfortable to wear and interesting to knit as well with lots of new knitting tweaks you’ll want to use in your other projects. These are techniques that have been introduced with other Knitting Nuances patterns and include: the Resilient Cast On, Showy Decrease and Double Decker Hat Top.

The hat starts with the Resilient Cast On that provides the stretch necessary for hat brims and a pretty edge. The pattern provides detailed instructions and there is a photo tutorial is available on our web site.

The Showy Decrease (featured in the Fiftyfifty Shell in Knitty) is used in both the brim and star design. The Showy Decrease turns your standard k2tog decrease into a design element by adding depth and texture to your knitting. It doubles the depth of your ribs. It is easier to show you, sotake a look at this blog post with photos.

The Showy Rib flows into an eyelet version of the Showy Decrease. There are two free patterns in Ravelry that will help you test out the Showy Rib; the Seismic Scarf and Telluride Canyon Scarf.

I highly recommend a ‘sticky’ yarn like the single ply Malabrigo or their Rios. Other options include merino blended with alpaca or cashmere, for example Cascade Highlands Duo. A label gauge of 18-22 sts per 4” will work as long as you knit the brim rib tight enough. The solid blue hat was knit with a 100% Merino with a gauge of 22 sts per 4”. The merino tended to stretch and slip and lost some of the spring needed to keep the hat on.

You can read more about the hat pattern on our blog site. Here’s the short link to the post that announces this pattern.

A free blanket version of the pattern has been added to this pattern.

Update: The pattern was updated for a knit 1 back & front increase. When that was done, there was an error on page 3 Set Up Showy Spiral Pattern. Make sure you have latest pattern which says Update in the name!