Long time no post! I’ve been crocheting and doing other crafts, but didn’t make something worth posting about until earlier this month. I had a couple of long bus rides and a few quiet evenings and made myself a new hat. It is a little big, very warm, and reversible!
I will give you a pattern, but treat it as a recipe; the stitch counts will depend on the size of your head and the gauge of your stitching. Briefly, the hat is made as two separate hats, starting from the bottom, that are then stitched together around the opening for the head.
Hat Band: Single crochet in back loop.
Both half-hats begin with the same band, so make 2 of the following:
Note: for joining rounds, I’m a convert to the “slip stitch pulled really tight” method.
Round 1. Foundation single crochet until the strip meets itself around your head without being stretched, but without extra slack (48 fsc for me). Slip stitch to join.
Rounds 2-4. Single crochet around in back loop only (48 BLO sc; 3 rounds). Sl st to join, in both loops.
Round 5. BLO sc until the final stitch; in the final stitch, 2 BLO sc (49 BLO sc). Sl st to join.
Rounds 7-10. BLO sc around (49 BLO sc; 5 rounds). Sl st to join, including at end. Cut yarn.
The point of increasing in round 5 is to make the opening half of the brim a little bit bigger than the half attached to the rest of the hat, so it is easier to fold up.
Hat Half 1: Nested half-double crochet.
“Nested half-double crochet” is a term I coined for myself in the process of making this hat: it means to make each round of hdc (after the first) in the extra loop on the back of the stitch, just under the strands you would usually stitch into. The loop you’re stitching into was your starting yarn-over.
My previous winter hat, affectionately called the Beehive, is back post half-double crochet, which has a similar look and is also thick and warm. Bphdc is a little more work to do and gives a tighter connection between your rounds. Nested hdc allows the rounds to pull apart a bit more. Since this hat is double layered, I didn’t need this side to be as dense as possible.
Another hdc note: to decrease, yarn over, pull up a loop in each of the next 2 stitches, yarn over and pull through all 4 loops on the hook. Some hdc decreases will have you yarn over a second time before pulling up the second loop, but that makes a really bulky decrease stitch for no good reason.
Anyway, on to the instructions:
Taking one of your two hatbands, attach your yarn with a slip stitch to the bottom of round 1 (the unused loops of the foundation single crochet). It is nice to attach just before the ends of the round meet (one stitch to the right if you are right-handed). That eliminates any gap without having to sew it up. As you go, stagger the locations of the decreases, to keep the hat curve smooth.
This half came out bigger than I intended, so I will write what I did along with what I would do if I made it over.
Round 1. Hdc around with 11 increases, evenly spaced or concentrated toward the back of the hat. Sl st to join (59 hdc). I only meant to make 10 increases but I think I began in what was not actually a stitch; this was fine.
Rounds 2-10. Hdc even in extra back loop. Sl st to join (59 nested hdc; 9 rounds). This is where I could change things, shaving off 2 of these rounds.
Rounds 11-12. Hdc around with 5 evenly-spaced decreases. Sl st to join (54 hdc, 49 hdc).
Rounds 13-19. Hdc around with 6 evenly-spaced decreases. Sl st to join (43, 37, 31, 25, 19, 13, 7 hdc).
Cut yarn, sew final opening closed, secure yarn end.
Hat Half 2: Moss Stitch.
Moss stitch – alternating single crochet and chain stitch, staggered so you’re sc-ing into the previous round’s chains – is a holey stitch and maybe a surprising choice for a warm winter hat. I imagined that it could be a decorative outer layer, breaking the cold wind a little bit but mostly just holding the nested half-double crochet layer nice and tight, or an insulating inner layer, compressed more and covered by the still-dense hdc outer layer.
Moss stitch seems to typically be made as rectangles; I’m not sure there are standard ways to increase and decrease it. I invented my own. Increases, which only occur in one round, add two stitches at a time: make (sc, ch, sc) when you would normally just single crochet. Decreases have to be done in paired rounds. In the first one, you skip a chain, so you’re sc-ing into two of the previous round’s chains with no new chain in between. In the second decrease round, you chain 1 to skip both of those consecutive single crochets.
To begin, attach your yarn to the second hat band as you did for the nested hdc hat half.
Round 1. Sc around, making 12 evenly-spaced increases: *inc, sc 3*. Sl st to join (60 sc).
Round 2. Moss stitch around: *sc, ch*. Sl st to join, in addition to the final ch (30 sc + 30 ch).
Round 3. Moss stitch, starting with ch, with 3 double increases, evenly spaced or concentrated toward the back. To start a moss stitch round with chain, after the joining sl st, ch 2 and skip the first sc of the previous round. To double increase, (sc, ch, sc) in one ch. Sl st to join (33 sc + 33 ch).
Rounds 4-9. Moss stitch around, starting with sc on even-numbered rounds and ch on odd-numbered rounds. Sl st to join (33 sc + 33 ch; 6 rounds).
Round 10. Moss stitch around, skipping 6 evenly spaced chains. Sl st to join (33 sc + 27 ch).
Round 11. Moss stitch around; when you reach two consecutive sc (where you skipped your ch in the prev round), make 1 ch to skip both. Sl st to join (27 sc + 27 ch).
Rounds 12-19. Repeat rounds 10 and 11; stagger the locations of the skipped chains in every even round ([27, 21, 21, 15, 15, 9, 9, 3] sc + [21, 21, 15, 15, 9, 9, 3, 3] ch).
Cut yarn, sew final opening closed, secure yarn end.
Joining/edging
Put one half hat inside the other, wrong sides together (you want to be able to see the front of the moss stitch and the ridged side of the nested hdc). Line up the back seams.
The joining and edging happen in one round. To continue the back-loop-only look of the hatband, I stitched in the back loops only of each final round. That is, when you put the two half hats together there are four strands of yarn you could make your stitch into; use the two middle ones.
I wanted to try something new for the edging instead of continuing my crab stitch default, so I pulled up an old bookmark of two alternatives to crab stitch from BuddyRumi. The second one is called Single Crochet Cross Over Stitch; I have not been able to turn up any trace of this in any other stitch libraries I’ve checked. To make it, pull up a loop in the next stitch, wrap your working yarn around the stitch so far, and then pull a loop through both loops on the hook. The yarn comes to the front on the left side of the stitch and goes back to the back on the right side (opposite for lefties), passing underneath your hook on both sides. I was able to make surprisingly good time with it for such an awkward motion.
