20 hats in 2021

Long time no blog. Honestly, fall 2021 was kind of a blur. On top of this endless pandemic, my mother passed away in December. I'm just starting to come out of the haze in some ways, while simultaneously realizing that this emergence has been and will be anything but linear. 

I had a goal to knit 21 hats in 2021, and I almost made it! I feel certain that I would have if I hadn't had corrective eye surgery (elective, don't worry!) in November. Oh yeah, another thing that made last fall very strange!

Anyway, I though I'd take you on a tour of the hats of 2021. 

My hat obsession was strongly influenced by Woolly Wormhead, whose ingenious designs are downright addictive. 12 of my 20 hats are hers, making me a finisher of the annual Woolly Dozen challenge (woo hoo!). I made 3 of the 5 designs in the Imperceptions collection, and I definitely plan to make the other 2 this year. They are Daedalus, Circe, and Echo. I was able to make all of these stranded colorwork designs from sock weight yarn in my stash:

 

The collection that really captivated me, though, was Elemental. There are 5 designs in it. I made them all, and worked 3 of them twice, so 8 Elemental hats in all - ! These are worked from DK yarn and are knit sideways, meaning they are knit flat and then grafted at the end. They use short rows for shaping. I love these designs so much. I knit a lot of them from Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool, which I think provides excellent drape in the slouch. I also used handspun in a couple of them - handspun FTW!

 

I made one other Woolly Wormhead hat, the Waffle Slouch (Rav link), which was a very quick project that calls for worsted yarn. I used handspun from my stash, which felt good.

I also knit two hats from Shetland yarns. The first is the official 2021 Shetland Wool Week hat, Da Crofters Kep, and I used "real" Shetland yarn from Shetland for it (Jamieson's of Shetland Spindrift, to be precise). The next one is the Butterflies and Bees Cap, a design from Sweet Tree Hill Farm in Virginia - it uses their own Shetland farm yarn from domestic sheep. Both hats are for Sharon, who chooses which one to wear based on the current length of her hair and how windy it is. Like the Imperceptions hats, these stranded colorwork designs are worked with fingering weight yarns.

 Finally, I have some "easy" hats that were largely completed in meetings, in the car, during concerts, etc. I started the year making two "Double Felici" hats, which use two different colorways for the inside and outside, making them double thick and reversible. 

 I also cranked out a couple of Sockhead Slouch hats (#10 and #11, if you're counting, which obviously I am). The first is completely garish and I hate it, but the yarn is now out of my stash and I donated the hat. The second is from a special colorway called Fair Fight dyed by Neighborhood Fiber Co in honor of Stacey Abrams. It is for my sister, who lives in Atlanta - we are both huge fans of Stacey.

And finally, I got on the Musselburgh bandwagon and banged out a couple of these. The first one is for someone with a really big head and/or really big hair - you can see it's a bit large on my model! I call this one my "low vision hat," because I cast it on between my eye surgeries so I'd have something to work on after eye #2 was done (aran weight yarn was perfect for this situation). And the second one is from a pretty skein of speckled sock yarn - I think it looks like funfetti cake. I put the final stitches into this one on January 1, 2022, but I'm counting it with my 2021 hats. 

I have really enjoyed my exploration of hats, and I don't see any reason to stop making them now. They are so easy to find owners for. Of the 20 hats, I made only 3 for specific people - and 9 more have already gone to warm someone else's head. I have quite a few in a bag marked "Hats that Need Heads," and I've no doubt that their owners will find them. They always do.