This season, I challenged myself to find ways to use multi-colored (a.k.a. self-striping) yarns in some of my designs, while still keeping them modern-looking. So I went to one of my yarn stores and wandered the aisles until I found my first target: Lion Brand’s Tweed Stripes in “Caramel”. Of course I was drawn to the neutral hues, so I thought that might be a good compromise for me to begin with!

I wanted to keep the pattern really simple, because in my opinion, the busier the yarn, the simpler the stitches should be. Intricate stitches tend to get lost more easily in multi-colored yarns, and even more so in tweeds. Sometimes, less really is more. So, the body of this hat is just comprised of alternating SC and HDC rounds.

I also really wanted to balance out the busyness of all of the colors, so I chose a yarn from the Vanna’s Choice line, also by Lion Brand (color: “linen”) that matched the lightest color in the tweed yarn, and used that to make the band and the pom pom. Honestly, I would not have liked my result nearly as much if I’d done the entire thing in the tweed, but I think the linen color at the top and bottom of the hat really brings it all together and makes it work.