New Hat

We went and saw The Golden Compass this afternoon. I quite enjoyed it, though I did find some of the deviations from the book annoying. Anyhow I tried to duplicate Lyra's hat from the film (seen here and here), and I think I did fairly well. Here is Walter modeling the hat for me, and Nils is helping me take the picture.


This is how I made it, in case you wanted to know:

Using one strand each of off-white chunky yarn (wool ease chunky to be precise), light brown homespun, and a white light-weight boucle, (for bulk, color, and texture respectively) cast on 44 stitches using size 10 needles. Knit in stockinette, with a single garter selvage (knit the first and last stitch of every row) until the piece is eight or nine inches long. On the last row, knit 22 stitches, then finish by folding piece in half with wrong sides facing each-other and the needles parallel, then use a third needle to work a plain bind-off on both sides at once. To make the ties and edge the front, I doubled the number of strands of yarn I used for the knitting, and did a chain stitch with a size P crochet hook. Make a 10 inch chain, then chain stitch through the hat along the front edge, and finish by chaining and additional 10 inches on the other corner.

What I would have done differently: If I had bigger needles I would have used them, and correspondingly used thicker yarn, or more strands at once. Also I would have made it more brown (to match the one in the movie). And after seeing the movie, the hat clearly had a roll brim edge, which could easily be accomplished by making the hat longer before binding off and attaching the ties farther from the corners, however I'm rather fond of the braid like look the chain stitch created along the edge, and how it worked in with the ties, seen here: