This pattern (along with most of my earlier work) was retired in the summer of 2022. However, it may be available for a few days once or twice a year. Read on for details!

In the summer of 2022, I realized that maintaining a back catalog of hundreds of patterns was kind of overwhelming. I couldn’t do it and still release new things. So I took my old patterns down so I could keep doing new work.

Since then, a handful of my favorites have come back, and lovely new things have come out. But the vast majority of the old patterns are retired and will no longer be generally available.

However, enough folks have asked about some old favorites that I’m planning to make many of the retired patterns available for a few days once or twice a year (most likely in late spring and then again in the fall around Thanksgiving).

• If you see the buy buttons on this page, you’ve caught it on one of the days it’s available, and you’re welcome to grab it!
• If you don’t see the buy buttons on this page, then it’s not currently available.
• If you want to hear when the retired patterns will be available, subscribe to the mailing list or patreon, or keep an eye on my instagram.

Teazle noun a plant from the genusDipsacus, which has prickly leaves and flower heads

We all knew it was going to happen. One of these days I was going to fall for brioche. And when I fell…well I was going to fall hard.

This hat was my very first proper brioche project, and I can say with absolute certainty it will not be my last (there are already more on the needles…I’m not even a little bit sorry).

Now we come to the potentially tricky bit.  Because it is my first brioche project, I totally don’t feel comfortable claiming I can teach you everything you need to know about brioche.  I want you coming into this with a little bit of basic background knowledge (sort of like how I expect you to know how to knit, purl, and yarn over for my other patterns).  You want to be able to work two color brioche in the round (the rest I’ll tell you how to do, but that I want you feeling confident with on your own).  The good news is you can get to that point in like an hour of swatching and video watching (seriously, watch this one, you’ll be all set).  

And just in case you’re feeling a little apprehensive, I promise brioche is not as hard as it looks. I spent the whole first week I was working it going ‘wait, is this all there is to it? Why did I put this off for so long? Why did no one tell me it was so easy and fun?’ (For the record, they did, loudly and repeatedly, I just wasn’t ready to listen. I’m like that sometimes.) If you want to read a little about how I learned and what resources I found useful, this blog post lays a lot of it out (along with a good bit of cheerleading).

So, if you’ve ever done a brioche project, you already know you can do this because you totally have way more practice than me. And, if you’re new to brioche, and you want to spend an afternoon doing a few swatches, you can totally do this too (one of my testers did this as her first brioche project and hers is so cute I can hardly stand it). But if you’ve never ever done any brioche and you’re having the sort of day where learning something new sounds awful instead of fun (I hear you…we all have those days from time to time), then go ahead and take a pass this time (it will be here for you later if you get to feeling like it sounds fun).

As for the hat itself? Well I’m rather taken with it!

You start with your basic ribbing (Translation: you do the easy bit early on while you get a feel for things). Then you work beautiful little seed pods (Translation: as soon as you’re just starting to get bored with the ribbing, you get to switch over to the fancy bits because really…those are super fun). You do as many sets of those as you like before switching back to ribbing (Translation: if you’re having fun, keep going…if you get a little scared, you only have to do them once and you can totally go back to the ribbing and have it look awesome). Then at the end, you work a very tidy crown (Translation: seriously, every brioche crown ever looks like magic, you owe it to yourself to do this at least once just because it’s so satisfying).

The hat is written in four sizes (castons of 70, 80, 90, and 100 stitches), and you should feel free to adjust your gauge a bit to fine tune the fit of the hat. Just be sure that you’re working at a gauge that gives you a fabric you like with your chosen yarn!

I recommend working at something around 4, 4.5, 5, or 5.5 stitches per inch, and I’ve included a table to help you figure out what gauge you’ll want to use for your size. With that range of sizes and gauges, the hat will fit a head between 18.25 and 23.5 inches (with lots of points in between).

You’ll need two different yarns, about the same amount of each. You should be able to very comfortably make any size with 150 yards of each yarn. That’s a very generous estimate. The orange hat (sized for a large adult head) took about 100 yards of each yarn, the yellow hat (sized for a child) took about 80 yards of each yarn.

This is perfect for you if:

• You’re smitten, smitten I tell you with those lovely little seed pods
• You have come to realize that a brioche hat crown is a thing of beauty and you pretty much need one on the needles right this minute

It’s not for you if:

• You don’t like charts (the pattern uses charts)
• You hate swatching (you need to swatch to check your needle size)
• You don’t already know how to brioche and you don’t want to learn (the pattern is not a brioche tutorial, but if you can knit, purl, slip, and yarn over, and you have just a teeny tiny bit of faith in yourself, you can totally do this)