This pattern is retired and not usually available. However, I make many of my retired patterns available for a few days twice a year, and this is one of those times! It will be available from now through some time on Monday, December 2. Then it will go away again.

In the summer of 2022, I realized that I found maintaining a back catalog of hundreds of patterns 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.

A few favorites have come back, and lots of new things have come out! But the vast majority of the old patterns are retired and are no longer generally available.

However, enough folks have asked about old favorites that I make many of the retired patterns available for a few days twice a year (usually in early summer and around Thanksgiving).

• If you see the buy buttons on this page, you’ve caught it on one of the days it’s available!
• 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 are available, subscribe to the mailing list or patreon, or keep an eye on my instagram.

Wavering adjective fluctuating in opinion, allegiance, or direction

This is a companion to Unwavering (the cuffs in the picture at the bottom of this page).

This really shouldn’t be this amusing. It’s just a stripe. It should probably be bordering on boring. But somehow it’s really not. One little stripe racing around the hat makes this whole thing more fun than it has any right to be.

And don’t worry, it’s not hard to do at all! Technically it’s colorwork…but you only do three tiny stitches of the contrast color on each row, so it’s about as easy as it can be. There’s a detailed tutorial to walk you through it step by step if you’re feeling nervous, but I suspect you’ll have the hang of it and be zooming along in no time.

Oh and while we’re talking tutorials, there’s a second one in there on how to make awesome detachable pompoms. It lays out the best way I’ve found to hold pompoms on securely (I hate when they flop around) and let you take them off (or put them back on) in about ten seconds flat. Because while I think the pompom is adorable, I understand that you may not want one every day (or you may want a whole bunch of different ones to swap out as your mood changes…or you may just want to be able to pop it off to wash the hat).

Pretty much the only thing you’ll have a hard time with is picking colors. Team colors? House colors? School colors? Something to match your favorite coat? Do the same background color for everyone in your family and make the stripe and pompom their favorite colors? Use up the last tiny bit of that super precious yarn as the stripe (you only need about a dozen yards)? The possibilities are pretty much endless!

The hat is written in four sizes (castons of 109, 117, 125, and 133 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 5.5, 6, 6.5, or 7 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 18.75 and 24 inches (with lots of points in between).

This hat uses between 200 and 250 yards of the main color (that’s the gray in the pictures), and about 10-15 yards of the contrast color (that’s the orange in the pictures). If you want a pompom, I strongly recommend planning for 100-125 yards of yarn for that (pompoms always look best if you use way more yarn than you think you’ll need)!

This is perfect for you if:

• You simply must know how that stripe works
• You absolutely must have a pompom…but only sometimes

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)