Men's "Striped" Hat

I've made the husband multiple hats at this point, this is his favorite. Here is the final product, with me as the model. The husband was holding the camera since I didn't know how to use it at the time. It's a bit too big for me.

Striped men's hat

The short story that goes with this hat is my husband and I were at Jo Ann's Fabrics and I was wandering through the yarn aisle, where I'm always drawn to regardless of why we are there. He was there too and saw this yarn that he instantly loved. He held the skein out to me and asked if I could make a hat out of it. I was hesitant because I've never worked with this particular kind of yarn before.

It was Bernat Mosaic Yarn, Into the Woods, and if you look carefully it's single plie (hope I get this terminology right), which I worried would be difficult to work with. However my husband loved the color so much, earth tones are his favorite, I was willing to give it a try.

I took inspiration from a very simple men's hat pattern. I say inspiration because one thing I've learned with hats is they seem to be very specific to the intended wearer. Especially since I don't really check my gauge and go with whatever yarn I like, rather than the recommended size. So I used this pattern by first following it to get the base. Then, once I got the idea of how it increased, I just crocheted a few rows and then measuring against my husbands head to check if the hat was the right size, unraveling when it didn't fit and adjusting as necessary. Finally, I didn't bother with the ribbed edging and just used a row of single stitch.

Hat while flat to see single crochet edging.

I love how the stripes came out. I honestly wasn't sure what it would look like with two strands of yarn that change color. However I lucked out because the two skeins we bought started at the same color and were relatively consistent in how they changed until the end! This gave us these awesome stripes.

If you look carefully below, you can see both strands of yarn and how they weren't exactly the same, but close enough that the stripes really stand out.

Close up of hat to see stripes and how yarn changed color.

So overall this was a great experiment and I'm much more confident in my hat making abilities, after getting three under my belt. Though definitely I think I'd be less sure if I didn't have the head it is meant for, or someone with the same size head, readily available.