Heart’s Illusion will be 50% off (just $2!), no code required, until the end of the day on January 5th, EST.

I remember the exact moment when I had the idea for this hat. I was watching the first episode of my new favorite show, A Million Little Things, and the teenage daughter was singing Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now as a tribute to her late father. With tears streaming down my face, I flipped through hundreds of pages of knitting patterns and motifs in at least half a dozen books, until I found the section on Illusion knitting in one of the Vogue Stitchionaries.

I had the song in my head the whole time I was knitting the samples, as I was writing and grading the pattern, and I hear it again every time I see the hat… Such a beautifully sad song…

I’ve looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It’s love’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know love
I really don’t know love at all
-Joni Mitchell

Heart’s Illusion uses the technique of illusion knitting; using two highly contrasting colors and carefully placed knit and purl stitches to create a motif that blends into the background until it is viewed from just the right angle, and then a picture appears, as though it were there the entire time.

I knit it using the lovely Fiber Seed Sprout Worsted, in Midnight Blue and The Tempest. The colorways complement each other wonderfully. One skein of each color is plenty of yardage to knit two adult hats, or at least one small adult and two children’s hats.

Sizes: Baby (Toddler, Child, Small Adult, Adult); 13.7 (16, 17.5, 19, 22)”/ 35 (40.5, 44, 49, 56)cm hat circumference.

Needles: US 6/4.00mm or size to obtain gauge in 16”/30cm circular and DPNs, and US 5/3.75mm or 1 size smaller than gauge needle in 16”/30cm.

Gauge: 17.5 sts = 4”/10cm in Garter st in the round.

Yarn: Fiber Seed Sprout Worsted (90% superwash Merino Wool, 10% Nylon; 220 yards/230 meters per 136 g) in Midnight Blue and The Tempest; 1 skein each color will make two adult hats.
70 (90, 120, 140, 160) yards/ 64 (83, 110, 128, 146) meters total; equal yardage for MC and CC if worked in corrugated ribbing; roughly 10 yards/9 meters more of MC if 1x1 ribbing is used.

Notions: stitch markers, tapestry needle.