This pattern is retired and not usually available. However, I make many of my retired patterns available for a few days twice a year, and this is one of those times! It will be available from now through some time on Monday, December 2. Then it will go away again.

In the summer of 2022, I realized that I found maintaining a back catalog of hundreds of patterns overwhelming. I couldn’t do it and still release new things. So I took my old patterns down so I could keep doing new work.

A few favorites have come back, and lots of new things have come out! But the vast majority of the old patterns are retired and are no longer generally available.

However, enough folks have asked about old favorites that I make many of the retired patterns available for a few days twice a year (usually in early summer and around Thanksgiving).

• If you see the buy buttons on this page, you’ve caught it on one of the days it’s available!
• If you don’t see the buy buttons on this page, then it’s not currently available.
• If you want to hear when the retired patterns are available, subscribe to the mailing list or patreon, or keep an eye on my instagram.

Proclivity noun an inclination or predisposition toward a thing

This is a companion to Predilection (the mitts in the picture at the bottom of this page).

Sometimes? Sometimes I want something I can do on auto pilot. Something where I can just let my hands do their thing and I don’t have pay too much attention. Something where I can sit back and stare at the yarn and just sort of know it’s all going to work out in the end.

I mean don’t get me wrong, I want the end result to be delightful! But sometimes I want the process of getting to that end result to be seriously mellow.

And that’s what’s happening here. Grab two yarns, work a couple of rows to get the pattern established, then just glide. The only hard bit is deciding which side of the fabric you like best. I solved that by going for a folded brim, which means I get to see both sides of the fabric and I get warm ears when winter rolls around again.

You’ll want two yarns of a similar weight. They don’t have to be exactly the same, but you’ll want them to be close. One will be more prominent if you wear it right side out, and the other more prominent if you wear it inside out, so they’ll both get room to shine (especially if you make it with a folded brim like I did).

And yes, you are doing a teeny tiny bit of brioche, but I promise this is about as easy as brioche gets (no increases, no tricky decreases, no cables, no lace…if you can knit, purl, slip, and yarn over you totally have all the skills you need). You can totally do it (and you’ll be so proud of yourself when you do)!

The hat is written in six sizes (castons of 80, 88, 96, 104, 112, and 120 stitches), and you should feel free to adjust your gauge a bit to fine tune the fit of the hat. Just be sure that you’re working at a gauge that gives you a fabric you like with your chosen yarns!

I recommend working at something around 4.5, 5, 5.5, or 6 stitches per inch, and I’ve included a table to help you figure out what gauge you’ll want to use for your size. With that range of sizes and gauges, the hat will fit a head between 18 and 25 inches (with lots of points in between).

Oh, and just to help you plan, I used about 125 yards of each yarn to make a hat for a large adult. If you’re making a bigger or taller hat (or if you use a skinnier yarn), you might want more like 200 yards each.

This is perfect for you if:

• You’ve got an absolutely glorious yarn (or a particularly opinionated one) you want to show off
• You could use something mellow in your life right now

It’s not for you if:

• You don’t like charts (the pattern uses charts)
• You hate swatching (you need to swatch to check your needle size)
• You don’t already know how to brioche and you don’t want to learn (the pattern is not a brioche tutorial, but if you can knit, purl, slip, and yarn over, and you have just a teeny tiny bit of faith in yourself, you can totally do this)