I wanted to make my niece Anna a crown hat for her birthday, because every little girl is a princess and an aunts job is to spoil kids rotten. But, all the princesses coronets I could find were boring, and St. Edward’s Crown is so iconic I couldn’t stop myself from taking my inspiration from it.

I wanted something that would appeal to a child, be shiny and silly but at the same time quite simple and usable. So while it is a rather straightforward double knit beanie, it has a lot of beads. And then a couple more beads. And, well, some more beads than that.
Consider yourself warned.

I have aimed both my hats at kids, but the pattern could with some added hight and slightly bigger needles or yarn easily stretch to fit an adult. The pattern makes quite a short and wide hat. Size is achieved by calculating your own gauge, and with fingering weight yarn it will probably come out somewhere between 51 and 58 cm depending on your needle size. I guess toddler sizes could be achieved by using lace weight yarn on tiny needles… the number of stitches cast on is 152.

This pattern consists of charts and brief instructions. You need to calculate your own gauge.

Katie-Maus is doing a very clever alteration (I wish I’d thought of it…) by casting on fewer stitches and adding them on after the bottom band. I tried this on my blue hat and have added a new chart to the pattern.