A Hat for a Friend

A friend of mine, C, has been going through a hard time recently, because her mom is sick.  She is going through chemo, and my friend put a request out asking for hats for her mom.  She listed some of her mom's favorite colors, and I didn't have anything good in my stash, so I went out looking for new yarn.
C said her mom liked sea green, rose pink, and "violets" -- I assumed the S on the end was a typo -- and was a fan of anything flower-colored.  I saw a line of yarn, Lion Brand's Amazing, that mimics the color shifts of Noru's hand-dyed wool yarn in 100% acrylic.  I know, the yarn snobs out there are asking me, why on earth are you buying acrylic yarn for someone?  Well, when it comes to hats, I like to use acrylic.  Cotton doesn't have the stretch or give that you need in a hat, bamboo and silk are too expensive, and I don't like to knit hats out of wool because you never know if someone is allergic to it.  I'm allergic, and can't wear wool hats, no matter how warm and luscious they are, otherwise I'm scratching at my forehead all day.  So I hunted through to find a color combination I liked, and settled on one that reminded me of flowers.  Once I had picked it and saw that the color name was "violets," I knew I had the perfect yarn.

Next was finding the perfect pattern.  I hunted around online and settled on a pattern for a mohair hat that I kinda liked.  The Amazing yarn had a fuzzy-ish quality to it that I thought would work with this pattern.  However, the pattern (as most on the Head Huggers site) didn't have a gauge.  It called for fingerling mohair yarn on size 8 needles, and I had worsted-weight yarn.  I tried a swatch on size 8s, but decided I'd rather go for an airier knit, so I switched up to size 11 needles.  I went to my trusty pattern book, checked my gauge, and went for a 21 inch circumference on the hat.  I started with very loose tension, and the way it bunched up on the circular needles, it felt like it was going to be huge.  After I had knit several inches, it was clear that it was going to be huge, so I ripped it out and started again, casting on 10 less stitches this time.  It felt a little better, and I made sure to keep more tension as I knit.  With those fat needles, the knitting was still plenty loose, resulting in a pretty floppy hat.  The pattern called for a loopy flower to go on the top of the hat, but I looked through the flower patterns on the site, and found a different one I liked better.  The way you knit it is pretty cool -- you do the tips of each of 5 petals separately, leaving them on the needle but cutting the yarn and casting on a new petal each time.  Then, instead of cutting the yarn on the last petal, you knit across all 5 petals, and then start decreasing, bringing them all to a center point.  You also knit the ends of the tails in as you go, so there's no weaving-in to do at the end -- very handy!  The examples they used were pressed or blocked to flatten them, but I liked the 3-D effect of the curly petals, so I skipped that step.  Then you sew three beads into the center of the flower.  I went through my bead collection and found three mother of pearl chunks that I used instead -- they are less delicate, but I like the iridescence, and I like the contrast of square beads on the soft, curled petals.

Anyway, here's what it looks like all done.

The finished hat

Close-up of the flower -- the mother-of-pearl looks better in real life, I promise!

I think it's still too big, but hopefully it's not too deep, since the flower will make it difficult to roll the brim.  Now I just need to send it off, and I hope C's mom likes it!

Have you made a chemo cap before?  Do you have a pattern that you like?