Every child gets into mischief. But some wonderful children are so creatively mischievous that their parents wonder if they accidentally birthed a pixie. This hat is dedicated to those children and their loving but overwhelmed parents. In particular, it’s dedicated to my little niece, known as Sofie Sunshine, whose feet are outpaced only by her smiles.

The hood is designed to be close-fitting across the ears, forehead, and the nape of the neck, but it has more room at the top, presumably so that you can see the wearer coming from a little further away. Since it covers more of the sides of the face than most little-kid hats, it ends up being warmer. I used an acrylic easy-care yarn that jumped off the shelf and into my cart when I wasn’t looking. This yarn had definite ideas about what it wanted to become; I just fulfilled its tyrannical wishes.

Any soft, worsted-weight, child-friendly yarn could be substituted; I suspect Knit Picks Chroma Worsted would be particularly well-suited to this pattern due to its bright hues and long colour changes.