There's a story behind this hat. A long story.
In 2006, I bought some beautiful alpaca in an orange/yellow colourway at the Knitting and Stitching Show in the RDS. I wanted to make a scarf for my then-two-year-old, and after a bit of searching I found this fabulous Short Row Rib scarf by Ceris Morgan on Magknits. This pattern gives me serious knitting glee: it's simple enough to memorise quickly, yet complex enough to remain satisfying all the way through the project - plus, it looks very impressive. It's designed for chunky yarn, but with thin yarn on 3mm needles you get a lovely scarf for a small child.
I made the yellow scarf, and it was gorgeous, and before I could even photograph it, it got lost in the park. Oh well - these are the perils of knitting for two-year-olds. He's three now, so obviously it'll never happen again...
Anyway, as the autumn of 2007 drew near, I felt the urge to try again. I bought some yummy Rowan Tapestry at This Is Knit (Whirlpool colourway), and knit a blue version of the same scarf. As I was finishing it, I realised that it would make a beautiful and unusual hatband.
So I knit another length of scarf (I was getting pretty used to the pattern by now), long enough to go around Oisín's head, and sewed the ends together. Then I got out my calculator and did the obligatory maths, picked up stitches around one edge of the band and set off for the centre, decreasing regularly as I went. When I reached the centre I finished off with a little 3-stitch I-cord.
I'm really pleased with how this design turned out: it looks more or less exactly how I imagined it would. I love the way the pattern and the yarn work together: the short-row rib pools the colours in blocks, while the rounds of the crown make stripes, which gradually widen as the round gets smaller.
Here's a moody model shot, in which you can just see the scarf peeping out at the neck of the jacket. Yes, his eyes really are that blue.
