Eons ago, Hera, the queen of the gods had a trusted guard - the giant Argus with one hundred eyes covering his body. Argus was an exceptional guard - he never closed more than half his eyes, even when he was sleeping. After his death, Hera commemorated her faithful servant preserving his eyes in the tail of her favorite bird - a peacock.

This is a somewhat challenging free-form hat, suitable for adventurous knitters who enjoy making decisions on the fly and are comfortable with a bit of chaos and applying abstract techniques to their knitting.

It is designed for any variegated yarn as long as the yarn has a suitably long section of emphasis color, and it uses short rows to concentrate colors and form “eyes.” This helps to tame the chaos that variegated yarns produce. You will respond to the colors in the yarn, and learn how to control where the eyes fall. This hat is also helix knit, alternating 2 strands of yarn to form an unbroken, jog-free garter stitch spiral.

The pattern assumes you already know how to make a hat, and doesn’t specify circulars, DPNs or when to switch to small diameter knitting.

The pattern includes written instructions, and some charts to illustrate how to arrange the short rows and control the placement. It also includes rudimentary German short-row instructions, and helix knitting instructions. For further tutorials on both, see:

Helix/Helical:
https://verypink.com/2018/03/07/helix-knitting-jogless-on...
https://www.10rowsaday.com/helix-knitting

German short rows:
https://asatricosa.com/german-short-rows/
https://blog.tincanknits.com/2015/05/14/german-short-rows/

And this one is SUPER cool - but it’s a tutorial for GSRs without turning the work (involves knitting backwards) and this saves a lot of time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFOvKZ-zckU

Other techniques:
Knitting in the round (you should be able to knit a hat, including crown decreases before attempting this pattern), LTCO, joining in the round.

CHOSING YARN:

You will need one 100-gram (210 yards/192 meters) skein of Malabrigo Rios worsted yarn, or any worsted-weight variegated yarn of your choice that meets the needs of the pattern (see below). If you intend to make a very large hat with additional height and positive ease for a person with an extra-large noggin, you may need an additional skein. The two sample hats used 189y/173m and 200y/182m respectively.

If you want to knit a hat with actual peacock colors, see Threads by Megan Nicole’s yarn called “Plumage” which is a perfect peacock feather match. I also like her “Gaia” or “Tree of Souls” (but the latter rarely available as it’s not one of her regular colorways). She hand dyes to order in whatever yarn weight you need.

Evaluating your yarn: be sure to untwist your skein and look at the color changes. Look for skeins that meet this criteria:

• The bottom photo at left is a good choice.
• Includes ONE long-ish section of a color you wish to emphasize, between 14 and 24 inches long (36-61 cm) - red in the photo.
• The rest of the skein (“background”) should be as few or as many colors as you like, and the background colors can be short or long sections as you like. Note the yellow, green and blues in the photo.
• The emphasis color shouldn’t occur too frequently - you need about a yard/meter or more of background color(s) between instances of the emphasis color (in other words, the emphasis color shouldn’t be more than about 1/3 of the hank).
• Even within the same colorway, hand-dyed yarns will have some skeins that will work fine, and others that won’t work at all, which is why it’s important to open up the hank/skein to look at the repeats.
• Commercially-produced, printed yarns that you’d get at big box stores CAN work, but you will need to pull a few yards from the skein, and ensure it meets the criteria above. They tend to be much more regular, and the frequency of the repeats may vary, so the effect might be a little different.

So what if the emphasis color is too long/short? - Well, it depends on just HOW far outside of the range it is. If it’s just a little too long/short (like a few centimeters or an inch or two) - you can probably make it work, but the effect will be different (not unattractive, just a little different). Alternatively, if the emphasis color is too short, and it’s followed by a short section of another color, you can simply make two-color eyes, using the emphasis color and the short section that follows.

Yarn Weights and Custom Sizing:
The pattern gives explicit directions for one average adult size, in a worsted-weight yarn only. However, I provide some some basic guidance and advice for adjusting the size, or for using a weight of yarn other than worsted in my blog, here.

Two-color/yarn Variation

1. Pick a variegated color of yarn (VC) and a coordinating or cuff color of yarn (CC).
2. CO using the VC and then knit all stitches for one round.
3. Break VC, and join CC.
4. Helix knit garter stitch using both ends of CC yarn until cuff is of desired height.
5. Break the KNIT strand of the CC only and join VC (you will continue helix knitting).
6. Round 1 of rise: with VC knit all stitches (without creating eyes)
7. Round 2 of rise: with CC, purl all stitches.
8. Continue helix knitting, but follow pattern from here, using VG for knit stitches (and eyes), and CC for purl stitches.

Beanie Variation

1. Use same needles throughout (don’t switch to larger needles after the cuff).
2. Begin crown deceases when hat is about 6.5”/17 cm - 7”/18 cm from CO edge.