Where I live, it is just now the season of vivid rainbows – their colors so brilliant against gray clouds. This is a hat designed for a friend who deserves warmth and rainbows. It is something between a beanie and a cloche and uses both knitting and crochet. I’ve sized it for a 22-24” head, but you can make it smaller or larger by changing needle sizes, yarn weight, or tension. My gauge with the recommended yarn is 8.5 stitches and 13 rows to 2 inches.

For the knitting, the hat uses intarsia to get the vertical stripes, with a technique from Christina’s blog (http://www.oharethey.com/blog/intarsia-in-the-round-techn...) for joining it into a round.

You’ll need a little over 6 yards of each of the rainbow colored yarns plus about 2/3 of a skein of the gray. If you’re buying the yarn just for this hat, you’ll have a lot of color yarn left over, but it is a handy yarn to have around. Or buy more than one skein of gray and knit several hats!