This hat was first published in the Winter 2009 issue of the online magazine Twist Collective. Since that publication, I have made several improvements to the pattern, including a new set of compass points which use decorative increasing and decreasing to achieve smooth-edged points rather than the jagged ones on the original version. This is a refinement of my second effort at two-pattern double-knitting. The letter band is especially interesting, since the N and S are readable from both sides, but the E and the W switch places so that the compass is correct on both sides.

What’s New?

To make a long story short, it turns out that, per the Twist Collective contract, I should not have published the original version of this pattern at all. In light of this, I’ve made a number of significant changes to the design to distinguish it clearly from the original pattern without changing its aesthetics.

Four Winds v2 gets the same treatment as some other hats in this book: it has been redesigned in sport weight yarn rather than worsted. Frankly, the weight of this hat was not a big deal, but I wanted to distinguish this hat from the previous version in more than one way. Working it in a finer gauge yarn makes it more easily sizeable, but also requires me to redesign the rest of the chart. Instead of offering a lot of different options, I chose my favorites (and also the ones I didn’t use in the Twist Collective pattern). The increase/decrease work in the points has been changed and updated from the method I used the first time, and the decreases for the crown have been spaced out so that the result is less square. Finally, the letters are charted so that they will show up on the brim of the hat when folded up (an option the previous hat didn’t even have).