When we moved from Tennessee to Illinois in December, it became clear very quickly that I wasn’t properly prepared for a real winter anymore! I didn’t have a warm enough winter coat, and scrambled to order a warm but boring grey one. At the same time I decided that if my coat was boring, that I wanted to make myself a beautiful hat and cowl to go with it. I even took the chance to check out the independent yarn store in my new home, Klose Knit. There I found, and fell instantly in love with, this Malabrigo Mecha, in the color Archangel.
I started with Cabled Beanie Messy Bun Hat by Jennifer Renaud. I actually crocheted the whole thing, even though I wasn’t sure what I thought of how the cables were coming out. When I was done, the hat was too tall, and I didn’t like the cables, so I frogged it down to the brim, then remade it with my own cable pattern. (For anyone curious it was 75 stitches per row, crocheted in continuous rounds; laid our as “hdc, 6 strand cable, 2 hdc, 2 strand cable, hdc, 2 strand cable, hdc” repeated 5 times. I did 14 rows, then began the crown shaping.) The top has a hair elastic in it, so it can retain its shape as you pull your ponytail or bun through it.
For the matching cowl, I did the same exact pattern repeat, but to make it a little wider, I started with 105 foundation hdc stitches. Overall, I love the look of it, but I think I actually should have made it narrower, to sit closer to the neck, when my coat is zipped up. Here you can see that the wider width allows it to curl, so I might go back and remake it narrower next year.
And a second action shot I had to take, of me in my new hat, and Ada enjoying the beautiful knitted hat her Auntie @sheepBlue made.
. That yarn you chose is really pretty and guaranteed to dress up your jacket!