This pattern is retired and not usually available. However, I make many of my retired patterns available for a few days twice a year. The next time will likely be in the summer of 2025. Read on for how to get notified when it comes back.

In the summer of 2022, I realized that I found maintaining a back catalog of hundreds of patterns overwhelming. I couldn’t do it and still release new things. So I took my old patterns down so I could keep doing new work.

A few favorites have come back, and lots of new things have come out! But the vast majority of the old patterns are retired and are no longer generally available.

However, enough folks have asked about old favorites that I make many of the retired patterns available for a few days twice a year (usually in early summer and around Thanksgiving).

• If you see the buy buttons on this page, you’ve caught it on one of the days it’s available!
• If you don’t see the buy buttons on this page, then it’s not currently available.
• If you want to hear when the retired patterns are available, subscribe to the mailing list or patreon, or keep an eye on my instagram.

Incise verb mark or decorate with a series of cuts

This is a companion to Inscribe (the ornament sized hats in the picture at the bottom of this page).

Sometimes I have a hard time knowing when to stop. This all started last year when I made a whole stack of tiny, ridiculous ornaments (all playing with slip stitch colorwork and all following a whole list of arbitrary rules I set for myself…because my brain totally loves stuff like that). They were fun, they were adorable, and that should have been the end of it!

But I really didn’t want to be done with those stitches. And, judging from the messages I got from you folks, some of you didn’t want me to be done either. So I took my three favorite of those patterns and reworked them to be people sized (instead of ornament sized).

They still follow all the same rules as the mini hats (you’re only ever using one color per row, all the main patterning is made with only knits, purls, and slips, and the crowns are downright majestic), they’re just ever so much more practical!

The pattern includes the directions for all three hats. They’re written in four sizes (castons of 88, 96, 104, and 112 stitches), and you should feel free to adjust your gauge a bit to fine tune the fit of the hat. Just be sure that you’re working at a gauge that gives you a fabric you like with your chosen yarn!

I recommend working at something around 4.5, 5, 5.5, 6, or 6.5 stitches per inch, and I’ve included a table to help you figure out what gauge you’ll want to use for your size. With that range of sizes and gauges, the hat will fit a head between 17.5 and 24.75 inches (with lots of points in between).

This hat uses between 100 and 150 yards of the main color (that’s the white in the pictures), and about 75-125 yards of the contrast color (that’s the yellow in the pictures). With the yarns shown in the pattern, I was able to easily make two hats from one skein of each yarn.

This is perfect for you if:

• You think three hats are better than one (all three are in the pattern)
• You’re hopelessly in love with fancy hat crowns

It’s not for you if:

• You don’t like charts (the pattern uses charts)
• You hate swatching (you need to swatch to check your needle size)