This pattern is retired and not usually available. However, I make many of my retired patterns available for a few days twice a year, and this is one of those times! It will be available from now through some time on Monday, December 2. Then it will go away again.

In the summer of 2022, I realized that I found maintaining a back catalog of hundreds of patterns overwhelming. I couldn’t do it and still release new things. So I took my old patterns down so I could keep doing new work.

A few favorites have come back, and lots of new things have come out! But the vast majority of the old patterns are retired and are no longer generally available.

However, enough folks have asked about old favorites that I make many of the retired patterns available for a few days twice a year (usually in early summer and around Thanksgiving).

• If you see the buy buttons on this page, you’ve caught it on one of the days it’s available!
• If you don’t see the buy buttons on this page, then it’s not currently available.
• If you want to hear when the retired patterns are available, subscribe to the mailing list or patreon, or keep an eye on my instagram.

Inklings noun small suspicious, vague notions

This is a companion to Intimations (the cuffs in the picture at the bottom of this page).

There’s something to be said for understatement. For restraint. For picking just one special thing and giving it plenty of room to shine.

I mean don’t get me wrong, all over lace can be beautiful. Colorwork can be amazing. Complicated stitch patterns have a charm all their own. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with something a little flashy.

But for this? Well for this I fell madly in love with that brim and wanted to let it stand on its own.

Well, that’s almost true. I had every intention of letting the brim speak for itself. But then I had a moment of weakness at the very end and added a tiny little star to the top of the gray hat. It’s optional (and I didn’t do it on the blue one), but I suspect you may be similarly smitten.

You’ll want two yarns of a similar weight. The body is a great place to show off a special yarn (I used a gradient, but it’s an awesome way to use a particularly opinionated or colorful yarn that might not look it’s best with a complicated stitch pattern). And the contrast yarn is a great place to use up yarn you’ve just got a little of left (you can totally adjust how deep the brim is to account for how much of the contrast yarn you have).

And you are doing a bit of brioche, but I promise this is about as easy as brioche gets (no increases, no decreases, no cables…if you can knit, purl, slip, and yarn over you totally have all the skills you need). You can totally do it (and you’ll be so proud of yourself when you do)!

The hat is written in six sizes (castons of 80, 88, 96, 104, 112, and 120 stitches), and you should feel free to adjust your gauge a bit to fine tune the fit of the hat. Just be sure that you’re working at a gauge that gives you a fabric you like with your chosen yarns!

I recommend working at something around 4.5, 5, 5.5, or 6 stitches per inch, and I’ve included a table to help you figure out what gauge you’ll want to use for your size. With that range of sizes and gauges, the hat will fit a head between 18 and 25 inches (with lots of points in between).

Oh, and just to help you plan, I used about 125 yards of the main yarn (it’s lighter colored one) and 25 yards of the contrast yarn (it’s the darker colored one) to make a hat for a large adult. If you’re making a bigger or taller hat (or if you use a skinnier yarn), you might want more like 200 yards of the main yarn and 50 yards of the contrast yarn.

This is perfect for you if:

• You’ve got an absolutely glorious yarn (or a particularly opinionated one) you want to show off
• You want to get all the fancy bits out of the way up front then sit back and zoom through the rest of the hat on auto pilot

It’s not for you if:

• You don’t like charts (the pattern uses charts)
• You hate swatching (you need to swatch to check your needle size)
• You don’t already know how to brioche and you don’t want to learn (the pattern is not a brioche tutorial, but if you can knit, purl, slip, and yarn over, and you have just a teeny tiny bit of faith in yourself, you can totally do this)