This digital download contains instructions for knitting your own Oddventure Hat. Please note: the instructions for the colourwork portion of the hat are charted and not written out longhand; you will need to be able to read knitting charts in order to knit this design.

About Oddventure 

The Oddventure hat is a happy adventure in using up your oddments. Pick out oddments of fingering weight yarns and organise them into gradients to produce a beautiful, shimmering (and thrifty) colourwork hat.

Originally a class taught at Shetland Wool Week, this pattern shows you how to make magic yarn balls; achieve perfect fit through gauge-swatching; and play with colour in new ways.

Working through it provides an ideal opportunity to explore colour interactions and use up odds and ends from your stash.

Credits

• Photography: Mark Stanley
• Tech-Editing: Frauke Urban

Yarn

Jamieson & Smith 2ply Jumper Weight Yarn (100% wool; 114m / 125 yds per 25g ball).

Oddventure is worked using one plain Main Colour (MC) throughout, and a Contrasting Magic Ball (CMB) that you’ll make by joining the ends of oddments together. Your unique version will be characterised by your Main Colour; how it interacts with the oddments you use; and the ways in which you sequence those oddments within your Contrasting Magic Ball.

You’ll need a MC (Main Colour). This can be any pale shade in your stash. The total weight/length required will be: 25g/115m (126yds).

You’ll also need a CMB (Contrasting Magic Ball). You’ll make this up from stash yarns and can use as many or few shades as you like. The total weight/length required will be: 30g/152m (166yds).

Needles and Notions

• Gauge-size needle(s) of preferred type for working small-circumference projects in the round.
• Needles one size smaller than gauge-size for working brim.
• (Optional) dpns for working crown decreases.
• Stitch markers (you will need 20 to space your motifs across each round, if using). 
• Pins and mat for blocking swatch.
• Ruler for measuring gauge.
• Tapestry needle for weaving in ends.
• Balloon or similar roundish form over which to block finished beanie.
• A length of smooth, strong, fingering-weight cotton with which to draw in the brim during blocking.

Gauge

Oddventure is knit with slight negative ease around the brim and no ease in the main colourwork body. The sample size is made to fit 57cm/22.5” head circumference; blocked dimensions (unstretched): 

• around brim 55cm/21.75” 
• around colourwork body of hat from brim to crown 22cm/8.75”

However, this hat can be made in several other sizes to suit. Because of the mathematical relationships between the motif and the crown decreases, the most straightforward way to resize Oddventure is to adjust your gauge.

The pattern includes: comprehensive swatching instructions, sizing notes and gauge tables in order to enable you to make a hat that fits you well. 

Several different stitch and round gauges are given to produce hats with a variety of head circumferences from 18.5” (47cm) to 26.25” (66.5cm) and brim to crown heights from 8” (20.5cm) to 9.25” (23.5cm). Make a gauge swatch and experiment with needle sizes until you get the right stitch and round counts over the colourwork pattern to achieve the perfect fit for your head.

Pattern notes

This beanie begins with a decorative section of striped slip-stitch rib. This is followed by three turning rounds and then a simple ribbed section, enabling the hat to hug the head around its brim when worn. When the brim is complete, the stitch-count is increased, after which the stranded colourwork body of the hat is worked. Centred Double Decreases shape the crown. When the hat is finished, the section of striped slip-stitch rib is turned up along the turning round so that the elongated slipped stitches are displayed on the outside of the brim, emphasising the colours used in the colourwork body of the hat.

Special Techniques covered by this design

• Centred Double Decrease
• Making Magic Yarn Balls
• Slip-stitch Rib