Loopy Hat

"What are you making?!"
"Why are there holes in it?"
"Now what are you doing to it?


That is what various family members kept saying to me as I knitted this hat.

I understand their skepticism. After all why put holes in a perfectly good hat?

This hat is what happens when I get bored with the normal.
I first saw this hat on Knitty Gritty a show I used to watch when I had cable. It took me a long time to find the actual pattern to this hat and once I had found it I had already started it from memory.

I call this "Loopy Hat" although it's original name is "Spaghetti Hat" but that name never made any sense to me. Do you see Spaghetti when you look at this hat? I don't.

I made this hat for a soon-to-be born baby girl. She won't be able to wear this hat until she is about 2 (I'm a little shaky on the size of the hat I had some problems) if I got the size right. The size was supposed to be 3-6 months, but the brown knits up a little looser than I first thought and it came out much larger than anticipated.

It was a lot of fun to make. I started out making a basic hat and added the holes as I went. I decided to use two colors because I wasn't sure how much of the brown I had. Turns out that the brown and the pink have different gauges, but I think it came out all right regardless. For the loops I toyed with putting stripes in it, but decided that would be too much work and too busy for an already "out there" hat. I knitted the i-cord (the loops) using a strand of pink and of brown. I think the i-cord loops are a little thick and I wouldn't do that again.

I'm going to try the hat on a one-year old at the daycare and see how it fits her, that will give me a better idea of how big it is. I'm wondering if it will be comfortable. It's a little "wonky". I'll post pics of the inside and a pattern for it later this week.