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Summer is the perfect time for those projects that are small enough to carry with you and interesting enough to hold your attention out on the porch or at a ball game. This fun hat pattern provides you with both of these aspects while not making you focus too hard on the knitting. The Summer Sorbet Slouch incorporates elongated cables and simple eyelet lace with tuck stitch welts so it sounds very impressive, but none of the patterns are more than 4 stitches and there are plenty of hidden rounds of stockinette tucked throughout as well. Just like a scoop of your favorite flavor, this slouchy Summer hat will be a treat to make & before you realize it, you'll be finished & ready for more!
Designer Notes
This was a really fun pattern to design & to knit up because it's been so long since I've designed a slouchy hat & if I'm honest, slouchy hats are my favorite to wear. The last one I released was way back in May of 2016!
The Highlighter Affair (Ravelry link) and the Soiree Slouch, pictured above, (Ravelry link) were released in May and April of that year and I ended up making about 7 samples between the two designs as gifts for friends & samples for dyers. That's a lot of knitting when you think about the fact that most of those samples were finished in less than a week. So I was a bit burnt out on knitting slouches, lol.
Fast forward to this year where I'm working on the quarterly collaboration kits with Merino y Vino. I know that I like a bit of variety when I get clubs sent to me so I wanted to do 4 designs that were each a different type of item. The first kit was for a textured cowl (the Addie Cowl), the second kit was a summery shawl (the Beach Day Shawl), and this month it was time to bring back the slouchy hat!
When I design for these kits it's always kind of a surprise what kind of yarn Lily will send me to work with (which is part of the fun). I know it's going to be her fingering-weight base but that's about it until I open the package. This month's colorway is variegated, but the colors are at least in the same range so I knew that I could choose some stitch patterns that had a bit of texture, but they didn't have to be completely plain either.
I got out my stitch dictionaries and started looking around for ideas that would work. Since it was a hat in multiple sizes with crown decreases it would need to use stitch patterns with short repeats... I found a pattern that I really liked, but the repeats were 16 stitches long and wouldn't work for what I was originally planning. When this happens I start playing around with the elements of the stitch pattern to see if I can tweeze out something that will work.
In this case the big takeaway was the Tuck Stitch Welts. The original pattern that I found had 8 stitch wide welts with lacy spaces in between that created a dashed-line/textured effect that I loved. I just didn't love the way it looked with this yarn in the swatch and I really didn't love the math that such a large stitch pattern would require for the crown. So, I expanded the welts to create horizontal lines around the circumference of the hat and added purl rows to the top and bottom of the welt to make working the tuck stitch easier for beginners.
The lacy section that had originally been between the dashed lines of the welts in the stitch pattern were then taken out separately and turned into a 4 stitch, 8 row repeat that became the Eyelette Patterning rounds on the final hat design. I knew that I still wanted another texture to the overall pattern and I have a fondness for working elongated cables to create openness and height without much extra yarn weight (this is a Summer hat after all), so those were added into the mix as well.
All that was left was to pick the ribbing and crown shaping/design. Since the overall fabric of the hat is very loose and kinda floppy, I needed a sturdy ribbing to help keep it on your head but it also needed to be not too sturdy or it wouldn't feel nice & would have kind of a weird chef's hat look (not what we're going for). So, 2x2 ribbing that's a bit longer than I normally would want in, say, a beanie pattern was the perfect choice.
As for that crown... Not gonna lie, I put off that decision until I actually had to do the math for all the decreases & figure out where I was going to hide them, lol. Usually I fully write out the patterns and do all the math before I ever cast-on the sample, but I was just excited to play around with the stitch patterns in the actual hat so I wrote most of the pattern & just went with it. (It is really fun to knit, I promise!)
Because of the stitch patterns that I chose, I knew that I would be hiding the decreases somewhere in the tuck stitch sections... but I also needed to keep those sections simple for first-time-tuckers so the purl rounds were my sneaky spot to take out large chucks of stitches at a time. Slouchy hat crowns are a bit different and more forgiving than other hat designs, since the fabric isn't fitted to your head you have a bit more grace in how you place the decreases. This pattern only has 4 decrease rounds total, but your stitch count drops to about 25% of your cast-on stitches by the time you're ready to bind-off. So, like I said, the purl rounds were perfect for all those decreases.
The last choice was to decide which stitch pattern would I be ending on. I really like a cute crown on a hat so the idea of having the Elongated Cables be the final pattern was very appealing because I knew that when it was cinched shut it would look a bit like a pansy since it has a little welt outline. In fact, I almost named this pattern something with Pansy in the title, but couldn't land on anything I liked and since that was really the only place with that motif it didn't feel like the pattern needed to be named for it. (Plus, it's been kinda fun naming the patterns to match the yarn names in these last 2 boxes.) I hope you enjoyed this little romp through my design process with me, read on for all the pattern specs and to order your copy. Happy knitting! 😘 Shaina ^_^
Note: This pattern was designed for Merino y Vino's Yarn Surprise Box so if you're a member please be sure to use your coupon code to get the pattern for free. If you aren't a member, what are you waiting for? You get yarn, book recommendations, a pattern, plus a bunch of other wonderful goodies in each quarterly box!
Details
Toddler (Child, Adult M, Adult L) 18" / 45.75 cm (20" / 50.75 cm, 23" / 58.5 cm, 25" / 63.5 cm) circumference
Yarn:
fingering-weight 150 - 400 yards (137 - 366 m)
Samples Used:
Merino y Vino
Fingering Weight
75/25 SW Merino/Nylon
4636yds / 100 g
In the Colorway:
Summer Sorbet
Needles:
- US 3 (3.25 mm) 16" Circular Knitting Needle
- US Size 3 (3.25 mm) DPNs
or size needed to obtain gauge
Notions:
- Stitch Markers
- Scissors
- Tapestry Needle
Gauge:
23 sts x 30 rows / 4” (10 cm)
in Stockinette, blocked
Techniques Used:
Elongated Cables
Knit
Kfb
Purl
P2tog
Slip Purlwise
Yo
Notes: - Pattern includes links to relevant tutorials. Tutorials are also posted to the the YumiYarns Tutorials page.
- The needle size listed is the needle size I regularly use, but I am a very loose knitter so you may need to go up 1-2 needle sizes to get a fabric that you like.
More Patterns for Summer:
$7.00 USD
$7.00 USD
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