[Finished] The eternal Musselburgh hat.
This took me aaaaaaages omg.
My brother is a land surveyor, so he prefers to wear black for the most part but he also does a lot of work in the middle of the road where visibility is really important. So his reversible hat can be black on one side, and on the other side it is a very bright orange to make sure he can be seen by cars! I don't trust cars.
I'm kind of dissatisfied with the shape of the black side, which is the side where I did the reductions (which I expected to be easier!) but I've been doing this long enough to know recipients rarely notice anything like that.
I've been knitting this project for what feels like forever, I apparently cast in on in August 2025 in hopes of finishing it in time to give my brother for Christmas. What actually happened is I spent almost a year knitting it and gave it to my brother just in time for our big family trip to San Francisco.
It's important to me that people realize how large this thing is. Final measurements were 12" wide and 26" long.
It is made out of sock yarn, so that too really slowed me down. If Bryce wants another one it's going to be made out of DK weight yarn.
The entire time, which probably contributed to my slowness, I was concerned it would be too big. My brother has a huge head, and has never owned a hat too big for him, but I knew it was possible! I knitted the largest size using the formula for the smallest gauge the pattern comes with, so it was 144 stitches around for the bulk of the hat. It actually was initially too small, when he tried it on for the first time, but I had him do that pre-blocking so I could strategize what to do next. I was even looking up ways to shrink superwash wool in the dryer in case it came to that but nope, too small.
Post-blocking, when I stretched it a bit, he seemed pretty satisfied.
Man I'm so glad it's done!
--
This post was last edited 0 minutes ago.
Comments
Reply to this post on Bluesky to add a comment. You can also reply by email.