Well, I finally found a use for the merino/carbonized bamboo yarn I spun a while back. My husband requested a warm winter cap and when I asked him to look at my handspun and see what he might like it made out of, that’s what he selected.

In some ways he has very simple tastes–for example, he probably wouldn’t have liked anything with a lot of cabling–but in other ways he is quite picky. The first hat I knit (shown above on me) he wasn’t crazy about because it was knit at a fairly loose gauge and he didn’t think it would be warm enough. So I decided I would keep the first one for myself thinking it would be a perfect running cap.

Here is attempt #2, which he likes a lot.

This hat was knit on much smaller needles (#3 and #2 instead of #6), and has a single rib over the ears. Actually, it’s two layers worth of ribbing; what I did was knit most of the hat in stockinette, rib a couple of inches to go over the ears, do a row of purl to create a fold line, and rib another couple of inches. Before sewing the bottom of the second part of the ribbing to the inside of the hat, I cut a strip of wool felt from an old coat and inserted the strip between the ribbing layers. Voila, an extra-warm hat.

Both of these hats were knit from the top-down, using this pattern by Charisa Martin Cairn. It’s a very adaptable pattern; instructions are given for several hat variations and you can use any weight of yarn for it.