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.

Presage verb to give an omen or warning of, to foreshadow

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

Six fiddly rows. There are precisely six fiddly rows in the body of this hat. The rest is marvelously mellow ribbing.

And those fiddly rows? They’re really just one kind of increase and one kind of decrease lined up all nice and tidy, so they’re not even all that hard! And really, you could even get away with doing only four fiddly rows if you were having the sort of challenging week where six rows was just a little too much to ask.

This feels like a heck of a return on your investment. Especially when you get to the end, peek inside, and realize it really is lovely enough to be reversible.

So if you’re having the sort of week (cough, year, cough) where you need an easy win, I think this could be just the thing. And yes, you are doing brioche, but I promise this is easier than you think (again, all the fiddly bits are kept to just a handful of rows…if you can knit, purl, slip, and yarn over you 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 four sizes (castons of 84, 96, 108, 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 yarn!

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 24.5 inches (with lots of points in between).

You’ll need two different yarns of a similar weight, about the same amount of each. You should be able to very comfortably make any size with 150 yards of each yarn (I needed about 125 yards of each to make a hat for a large adult).

This is perfect for you if:

• You love the smug feeling of doing something easy and having it look really, really impressive
• You want something lovely, but you know perfectly well this is not the moment for unnecessary complications thank you very much

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)