Thanks to my friend Junko Bailey for the idea to make a creative “right brain” hat with rainbow yarn! If you borrow this idea she gets credit for inventing it.

I made a beanie from the ribbing up with 68 stitches. I used 1x1 ribbing for about an inch, then knit until the total was about 5” deep. I used a 16” cable needle until I started decreasing, which I did in 6 segments, and I decreased at the end of each needle. When needed to, I switched to DPNs. (Next time, I would decrease at different intervals, spaced evenly back and forth across each needle because when I did one at the end of each DPN, it made the top twist a little and that made it harder to divide into two halves. It’s actually best to start with 6 stitches and then increase randomly between the six segments until you reach 68 stitches (or a multiple of 6) because it is much less noticeable, though more fiddly to work.)

The twists were all hidden below the coils, so it wasn’t that much of a problem in the end. To make the squiggles mirror images, I folded the hat in half and ran a row of contrasting yarn stitches along the edge of the fold to divide it in half.

I made the icord with 4 stitches knitted into a section that’s about 18” more or less. I knit matching length pieces, one each, from the pink and the rainbow yarn. I stuffed the beanie with plastic grocery sacks and pinned the yarn squiggles to the cap with straight pins until each side was filled. Then I pinned the squiggles to match in mirror images of each other. Another useful hint is to pay the most attention to the way the coils match along the division between the two hemispheres, especially at the front and back nearer the ribbing, because that is where it will show the most. If you need to fudge, work from the divide in toward the center area where it will be hardest to see that it does not match exactly.

Vanna’s pink is the perfect brain color. The Red Heart Mexicana Rainbow is great for a creatively stimulated brain. I would love to find a rainbow with a hint of pink in it someday and do this again.