Note: Addenda to the pattern included below.

The fizzy water stitch grew out of playing with slipped stitches with two or more colors. I was excited to create a two-sided stitch pattern that was worked one color at a time. Fizzy water is neither brioche nor double-knitting! The name comes from the mixed columns knit in one color and purled in a second color, which look like bubbles rising in a glass of carbonated water. I’ve used fizzy water to create cowls, and then after developing a technique to create increases, designed a fitted hooded cowl.

As my hair was growing out from scratch (chemo-baldness), I wanted a hat with more volume, and found that berets seemed to be the right form. So I challenged myself to figure out how to do decreases in fizzy water, and hence the top of this beret came into being. I wanted to achieve decreases that matched the increases as much as possible, and chose this branching style that reaches the center top.

This hat is a fun way to use leftovers in exciting color combinations. It can be worked in solid colors or with a variegated color inside, which will show subtly on the outside. That said, this is a reversible hat. If blocked without a plate, both the beret and tam can easily be worn either way; if blocked with a plate, re-blocking is necessary.

This pattern is for knitting either a beret or a tam – the tam simply has a longer brim to cover more of the head, and can certainly be made longer to cover one’s ears, which would be welcome on a cold day.

Size: Choose the size closest to, but no larger than, your head circumference.

Yarn: Smooth, plied worsted weight yarn in high-, medium-, or low-contrasting colors. MC should be a solid color or slightly tonally dyed, while the CC can be a color-changing yarn.

Addenda: Items not included in pattern that may be useful

Definitions
Column: MC, CC, MC
Mixed Stitches: Sts knit in MC and purled in CC

Why Slip Stitches Together in this Way?
To change the order of the stitches so you can purl the CC stitches together and k2tog or ssk the MC stitches together.

Tip
On each decrease round (in CC), work it in pattern and simply purl together any pairs of CC stitches you encounter. (Yeah, no counting required!)

Before Decrease 1
Count four columns to the left and place one split marker into the space just after the fourth column – in the mixed stitches. Now place one marker just before every sixth column. These columns represent every other pair of columns that were created in the Increase Rounds, and will guide the Decrease Rounds. Placing markers in the work rather than on the needles makes it easy to see the columns.

Before Decrease 2
Shift the split markers to just before the increase columns that were not decreased in the last set of decreases, adding a marker, and keeping the EOR marker in place.

Before Decrease 3
Shift all markers (except EOR) three columns to the left, to just before the first set of decreases.

Before Decrease 4
Shift all markers (except EOR) three columns to the left, to just before the second set of decreased columns.