In the 1600s, a sugar plum was a particular kind of comfit, a hard candy laboriously made by heating layers of sugar around a seed. By the late 1800s, the term could refer to any roundish candy or, more generally, any good thing. Today, sugar plum calls to mind some of winter’s best: the graceful fairy in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Ballet, and visions dancing in the heads of good children in Clement Clark Moore’s poem, Twas the Night Before Christmas.

Our Sugar Plum is an elegant confection for your head. It starts with knitterly details designed that add beauty and an extra layer of warmth, including a picot hem, trim welts, and balletic twisted stitches. The primary motif, reminiscent of ripe plums and round candies, works up quickly in Why Knot Fibers’ deliciously squishy Starlit yarn--a smooshy, DK-weight merino blend with a twist of sparkle that hints at the icy chill its wooly goodness keeps at bay.

Sugar Plum can be finished either of two ways: as a hat, or as a headband/earwarmer with a second picot edge. There are three sizes to pick from, so you can have the look you love and the perfect fit. The pattern includes both charted and fully written-out instructions. Any way you knit it, Sugar Plum has a little taste of everything sweet, delectable, and lovely.

And if your hand or arms could also use a snuggle, check out the first pattern in the Plums set, Icebox Plum, another two-fer that can be finished as cuffs/wrist warmers or as fingerless mitts.