A Pile of Hats

I love knitting toques.  There's something about watching the stitches fly around my 16" cable, building a hat-shape in no time flat.  And there's more patterns and styles and designs than I could ever possibly wear myself, and many that I just can't pull off. 

Doesn't stop me from wanting to make them though.

Thankfully, I live in a place that has cool to cold weather most of the year, and epically freezing for sometimes long stretches.  This means that most locals and visitors won't refuse a toque when I try to pawn them off, and they always make great presents.  This also means that they're a popular item for charity knitting!

That's where the pile at the top went, as well as the one above.  I dropped them off last week at our LYS during knit night.  I'm not sure what project or projects they'll go toward, but hopefully someone appreciates a nice warm toque!

I made this toque a couple of years ago, but it's been sitting in a basket unused for a while and I thought I'd send it along for someone to get some use out of.  I made up the colourwork pattern myself, which was fun!  It's a little small for an average adult's head, but would probably fit a kid perfectly.  The colours are off here - it's actually a bright teal against a dark grey background.

This is another oldy, but in a different way.  I made it back in 2012 as a Christmas gift for an old roommate.  Unfortunately, I didn't get it finished in time and got her something else.  In the mean time, it went into the UFO basket and I ignored it until two weeks ago.  It honestly took me less than a half-hour to finish up, and once blocked is actually a really cute hood! 

The pattern is Capucine and I knit it from two strands of Cascade 220 held together.  I think it's a little shallow (probably my gauge was off), but it's not too bad.  I traded braids for the original tassels at the front, but made a honkin' big on for the back.

I love this big, bulky, glitzy toque so much.  It looks horrendous on me, but when I won this yarn I knew immediately that it had to be made up in either this pattern (Vermonter) or as a giant bulky cowl.  This gold flake yarn looks pretty horrendous on the skein, but I figured it would knit up nicely.  I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Modified Stash-Bustin' Hampton

Now this toque, this one is my favourite of the bunch, and it was tough to not keep it for myself.  It's actually the same pattern as my Haines-inspired Hampton, but with the lace pattern removed and doing some major stash-busting.  I grabbed some left-over green worsted weight yarn and knit until it ran out, and then switched to some leftover light grey with the intention of knitting the rest of the hat with it. 

That...didn't pan out.  About 5 rows from the end, I ran out of grey.  Digging through the stash pile though, I found this brown and though "eh why not", ripped back a few rows and finished the hat with the brown.  It looked a little odd, but a small loose pompom in the brown at the top tied everything together nicely.

I'd meant to donate it much sooner, but the stark line between the green and grey bothered me.  Eventually, I stash dived again and found a teeny tiny bit of dark grey and duplicate stitched on the zig zag above.  SO MUCH BETTER!  I think it's a fantastic toque, a great pattern, and was so much fun to knit from scraps.  Also, I killed 4 small balls of yarn bits doing it, so yay!

Do you have a favourite type of thing to make?  If so, do you ever wind up pawning them off on everyone else because your love of making them exceeds your use for that item?  I sometimes feel like I did that one summer when I underestimated the amount of zucchini to plant and was reduced to literally abandoning them on my neighbours doorsteps because no-one would take them voluntarily anymore!