This hat celebrates the famous children’s story, and redemption allegory, by CS Lewis, as Book 2 of his Narnia Chronicles. From the bottom, it depicts the Pevensey children passing through the wardrobe; Aslan the lion in a fighting pose; then the kingdom of Narnia frozen in ice, in the crown of the hat.

I designed it for the Pen, Hook and Needles Podcast Group based in the USA and also on Ravelry, they combine books, writing, health awareness with knitting and crochet so I thought they’d enjoy a pattern based on a well known book: which they do! It’s been great fun to see their KAL and test knits of the hat and they are ”tickled pink” to release it to all Ravelers now, so here we go! Thanks to all of them for the knitting and the pictures.

It is constructed in tradition Fair Isle method of circular knitting with a ribbed brim, 6 segmented crown, and no more than 2 colours in each round. There is only 1 colour change in any round. The instructions are for Double Knitting weight. It is designed in 5 colours, but the motifs are sufficiently strong that it would work well in just 2 colours, a background and a pattern colour, provided they have a strong tonal contrast.

Using 2 colours, it would make a good first colourwork project, provided you can knit, purl, work in the round knitting every round, make simple increases/decreases, read chart, and (ideally, for reasons of tension) work with one colour in each hand.

It is a good stash-buster as you need only small amounts of each of the pattern colours, and about 40gms of background colour. This will make a firmly-textured, warm hat with a bit of slouch in it. You could possibly adapt it as a children’s hat by omitting some of the small pattern bands and knitting it with 5 segments rather than 6, or by using fingering weight (but I haven’t tried this.) Feel free to experiment with different colours: provided you have a good contrast of background and pattern colours, many combinations would work well, as the test knits show. Enjoy!