I Love This Pattern!

This pattern is Mixed Up May by Pat Salvatini, who is part of Hats for Sailors.

I have knitted 32 different patterns on my way to knit 100.  This will be the first pattern I knit when I am free to repeat patterns.  It was so much fun that I finished it in less than 24 hours!  It was very addictive and hard to put down.  I kept wanting to see the next color and pattern.  You can see from the picture that I used different colors for each pattern section, but I also used different colors for the sections in between.  It is a great hat to experiment with color and use up scraps of yarn.  I also think it would look great in one solid color.

Knitting all these hats, I have become either lazy or over confident.  I now only use a size 6 needle (that is probably laziness, why bother to get up and find other needles?).  I have a pretty good idea of how many stitches I need to get a hat of the right size and since it is going to a sailor, variation in size is not a bad thing (over confidence!).  So I never check my gauge (reckless?).  Maybe I should have.  For this hat, I used Cascade 220 superwash yarns for the entire hat.  It is a little thinner than some other yarns but I thought combined with my loose knitting, it would work out.  I realized when I was in the orange cabled section that the hat may not be big enough.  Thank goodness this pattern is easily modified!  I just added one more repeat to that section and the hat fits my head perfectly.  If I were to do it again, I might play around with the number of rows in different sections and see what happens (over confidence or reckless?).

Looking for a fun, addictive knit where you can experiment with both color and pattern but don't want it to be too complicated?  Give this one a try.