Dingle Hat

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that I’m trying to work through leftover yarn from previous projects. We live in a warm climate now, which has added an extra challenge to my knitting plans.

My current focus is on my leftover sock yarn. My sock drawer is overflowing, so I really don’t need to knit more socks for myself. I don’t have enough of any coordinating colors to make another light wool top. And it doesn't get cold enough here to get much use from items like hats, mittens, and scarves.

But I have family members who live in cold climates, and I have four months until Christmas!

I searched Ravelry and found a lot of patterns for winter accessories that call for fingering weight wool yarn. As a bonus, some are available for free and some I already own.

I was drawn to the hat patterns first because they are one-and-done projects. As much as I enjoy knitting socks and mittens, it’s refreshing to work through a pattern without having to make notes so I can duplicate the work on the second piece.

I started with the free Dingle Hat pattern by Sabrina Schumacher. It’s a simple slouchy beanie with instructions for stranded colorwork knitting in two, three, four, or five colors. The pattern is written for two sizes — Adult Small and Adult Medium — and I chose the larger size. However, I tend to knit loosely with stranded colorwork so I went down in needle size to US-2 (2.75 mm) and US-3 (3.25 mm).

From my stash, I picked:

• Cascade Yarns® Cascade 220® Fingering (100% wool) in 8505 White
• Cascade Yarns Heritage (75% Merino wool, 25% nylon/polyamide) in White, previously dyed with Strawberry, Grape, and Berry Blue Kool-Aid
• Plymouth Yarn Dancing Toes (40% Merino wool, 40% alpaca, 20% nylon/polyamide) in 99 Natural, previously dyed with Lemon-Lime, Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade, Changin’ Cherry, Berry Blue, and Fruit Punch Kool-Aid

The colors coordinate well, but the dye isn’t as vibrant in the Plymouth Yarn. I don’t know whether that’s due to the fiber content or a change in my dyeing process. In any event, I thought there would be enough difference between the two dyed yarns to look like a gradient with the white in the three-color pattern. I was wrong.

I still liked the color combination, so I switched to the four-color pattern. I used the darker Cascade Yarns Heritage for Color 1, the lighter Plymouth Yarn for Color 3, and the white between them as Colors 2 and 4.

The pattern was easy to follow and relaxing to knit. I think it would be a good first project for someone who is new to stranded colorwork. I really only needed to look at the instructions in the beginning as I moved from the brim to the colorwork, and at the end for the decreases. I love the way the hat turned out and already have a recipient in mind.

And the Cascade Yarns Heritage is all used up now. One yarn down, a lot more to go!