Decorum Hat

As soon as I saw this hat in Hunter Hammersen’s newsletter I both knew that I needed to knit it and that I needed to dye some confetti tweed yarn to knit it. I immediately bought the pattern and then ordered a few bags of the yarn base from my supplier. The multi-colored tweed really never appealed to me, until this pattern. You never know what’s going to make something sing to you!

I’m enjoying the pattern now that it’s well under way, but I was a little frustrated with the fact that it’s isn’t written for specific needle sizes and you need to figure out your own gauge with the yarn you want to use first. I understand the appeal of that, being able to customize, I just wasn’t expecting it in a pattern that is over 10 pages long. (To that end, there are only two pages that really need to be printed out. The rest are information that isn’t specific to the pattern and you can read them on your device if you want to save the paper and ink; and there are a TON of large colored pictures – again, not all are related to the pattern – in the pattern document, which is insane to me, but :shrug:.)

Anyway, once I got started, it has gone smoothly. The charting directions are also a little confusing at first, and I’m pretty sure there are a couple of errors in the directions (not the charts themselves), but if you’ve knit from charts before, you should be ok.

I’m nearly through the second repeat of the main chart, and I think doing a full third will make it too tall/slouchy for my liking. Again, there doesn’t seem to be a specific explanation for how to do fewer than three full repeats since you have to end on row 14 of the chart in order to move into the decrease chart. I supposed I can do fewer of the non-cable rows? I need to look at that more closely.

This is the first pattern of Hunter’s that I’ve ever knit, and at this point in the process I’m assuming that she’s more of a “here’s the necessary details to make this, but you’re going to need to figure out the rest of it for yourself.” She gives you the general framework for doing so, but it’s definitely not a hold-your-hand approach to design. I’m going to say this is not a beginner cable knitting friendly pattern. You’ll probably want some cable and chart-reading experience under your belt, and also be comfortable with swatching for gauge for a small project.

3/18 – Done! When I was finished with the second main chart repeat, the hat was about 7″ long from the cast on and it fit pretty much where I’d want the top of a fitted beanie to be. I definitely didn’t want it to be slouchy by adding a third repeat, so I ended up doing two extra rounds of Line 14 of the main chart before going into the decrease chart. I knit the decrease chart according to the pattern, grafted the top, and boom! Cute ass hat with ear boops! With this color I think it makes me look like a bear! LOL I love it!

So…while I think the pattern style itself takes a little bit of getting used to, the finished object is worth the effort. And if you’re comfortable with making decisions versus following a pattern to the letter, so much the better.