Windy Days Lace Hat

Ah, spring.  Bird singing, trees leafing, weather warming, wind blowing…and blowing…and blowing…

Of course, here in coastal south Texas it doesn’t really get that cold, and when it is cold, it’s not for long.  Except for a brief cold snap this past weekend, the temperatures this month have been in the 70s and 80s.  That would have been enough reason for me to recently give up the long hair for my prefered hair style of a bob.

Unfortunately, while a bob is certainly cooler, it does have one major drawback.  That wind…  My hair is now too short to pull back in a ponytail, but too long to keep out of my face in the constant winds.

Well, heck, I’m a knitter.  The obvious solution is a hat!

I spent some time searching for a pattern, but couldn’t find one that had all of my wants.  It had to be lightweight and cool, to deal with that Texas heat.  I wanted lace, both because it would be cooler and I wanted something delicate looking.  It also had to be loose fitting, because bobs require a bit of styling, and I didn’t want my work undone with hat head.

So I had to work up my own design.  The first thing I needed was a lace stitch.  After some looking through my books, I realized simple would be best, and chose the Turkish Stitch, a faggoting variation found in Barbara Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns, p. 185.  The stitch I did was actually a variation of that–it’s written to be knit on both right and wrong sides, but I was knitting in the round and was not about to try to add a round of purling.  I loved the spiral look I got from the stitch.

My first attempt didn’t work out–it ended up being shorter than I wanted.  I wasn’t looking for anything as long as a snood, but what I had wasn’t long enough.  So I started over, knit the ribbing longer for a bit more hold, and then knit the whole thing longer.

And this worked.

You can download the pattern here:  Windy Days Lace Hat or ravel it !