In Which the Pirate Begins a Mindless Project.

With my scrappy leftovers hat finished, the only other project I have on the needles is a sock which is just slightly too complicated for knit night and football games. So, I thought to myself, what should I knit? Then my sworn-sister made a Sockhead Slouch Hat… and there it was. My next hat. A stockinette slouchy hat in sock yarn will take approximately zero mental effort and approximately forever to finish – what could be more perfect for knit nights?

I have two balls of Trekking XXL in this rainbow colourway, but despite being the same dye lot, they look totally different. This one seems to be mostly marled; the other has the colours in each ply matching up more closely. This would have driven me crazy for socks, but for a hat I’ll just use one ball of yarn and it won’t matter at all!

The Trekking is finer than the “standard” sock yarn called for in the pattern, so I’m using size 2 (2.75mm) instead of 2.5 (3.00mm) needles, and I’ve cast on for the 152 stitch size based on my gauge math (8 stitches per inch x 21.5 inches around my head x 0.9 for snugness = 154.8) – I’m told the hat is stretchy and large, but at worst if it’s too big for me then it becomes someone else’s hat.

There’s a matching cowl pattern for the hat, which I plan to knit on the machine using the more solid variant of the yarn. It will be a good excuse use of the ribber, with which I haven’t yet fully acquainted myself. The machine can either knit ribbing or in the round, but since the cowl has only a bit of ribbing at the top and bottom, it won’t take much to seam that up the side. And I won’t mind if the hat and cowl aren’t exactly matching in their stripes or colour progression, either.