Beyond the Pattern…This hat has an involved history. Penny Sitler, the Executive Director of TKGA mentioned last winter that she was looking for the hat worn by the USA team at the Winter Games for her husband Gary. I gave the standard knitter’s response, “I can knit that” without ever having seen the hat. After some research I realized that, yes, I could duplicate the hat but I decided I could design a hat that had some features of the hat in question but would conform to the dictates of stranded knitting which the original does not. I had so much fun with the hat that I decided to size it for babies and children as well.

Each hat has “USA” stranded into the bottom. If you desire a less patriotic hat you can replace these with a monogram. (The letters used for the USA are from charts designed by Tink Boord Dill. Information about these books is provided at the end of the pattern.) All the hats are worked in patriotic red, white and blue and have “USA” stranding into the bottom of the hat. The sample hats also demonstrate ways you can reverse the colors. If you desire a less patriotic hat you can select different colors and replace the “USA” with a monogram. the sample hats demonstrate the ways I experimented with reversing the colors.

In case you are curious….the animals on the adult and child hats are white tail deer in a snow storm. The baby hat features fawns and fir trees.