You’ve seen the Carreau cowl in Knitty Winter 2017, and finally you can have the coordinating hat to go with the cowl. My original hat was made out of an alpaca super-bulky I had picked up at Mopaca in 2016. Unfortunately that alpaca super-bulky is no longer produced, and I always like to have my designs available in a more accessible yarn, so I made a second version of the hat with a different commercial substitute…the gauge matches, but the wool is almost half the weight of the alpaca. And there was enough wool left over to make a cowl, so I made a matching cowl with the leftovers. The hat is worked sideways and grafted together. A little extra care at the start of the graft will prevent a half-stitch jog, which is important at this bulky of a gauge.

Because of the nature of super bulky, grading a hat at this gauge is difficult. But the brim is designed to fit firmly on a wide variety of heads…the short rows and the slip 1 knitwise selvedge are the key to good brim fit on a sideways hat.

‘Carreau’ is French for ‘tile’ or ‘square’, and it also rhymes with ‘chapeau’, which is their word for hat. Try saying “carreau chapeau” five times fast…it’s a real tongue twister.