I ended 2024 by knitting five Spelling Bee hats as Christmas gifts. Many in my family play Spelling Bee daily so I decided to knit Spelling Bee hats for each family member who plays. Besides myself, I thought that there were only three of us. I showed off my first hat and found two more players. Apparently, my family loves word games!

The Spelling Bee is a NYTimes word game. This game is quite addictive. The objective of the game is to find words using the given 7 letters. The words must be 4 letters or longer and must include the center letter. A word that contains all 7 letters is called a pangram and if the player finds all the words, then they reach the score of Queen Bee.

In 2021, Sarah Sinclair published the NYT Spelling Bee: Queen Bee Hat, which is a free pattern. I told my family that they must wear their Spelling Bee hat if they score a Queen Bee!

I finished my own Spelling Bee hat in 2025. Although it is not technically part of this project, I included a picture of it here. It is fun to see everyone wearing their hats in one place.

Color work
It has been awhile since I have done color work with three colors so the first hat knitted up slowly. At first, I was moving my skeins around to trap the unused yarn. I reached back into my memory banks to remember Beth Brown-Reinsel’s lessons on how to trap floats and my knitting sped up a bit.

On my first hat, there was a pucker between each bee. Blocking smoothed it out although not completely. For the second hat and subsequent hats, I knitted the hat “inside out” where the stranding is on the outside and the results were better.

Pompoms
I have always made pompoms using homemade cardboard contraptions. That’s how I learned how to do it and I thought the pompoms turned out well enough.

My friend Jan TeaLover brought her Clover pompom maker to our knitting meeting and I tried it out. I was so impressed! The pompoms are big, fluffy, and round. They are just gorgeous and there’s no need to trim them. I am a convert!

The pompom maker does use more yarn but it is worth it. With the cardboard contraption, I used 7g. With the Clover pompom maker, I used 12.5g.

Everyone wanted a pompom with the exception of my brother. No pompom for his hat. With this project, I learned how to make beautiful pompoms.

Pattern adjustment for adult small
With DK and size 4 needles, I usually cast on 100 stitches because I like my hats on the snugger side. So, 120 stitches is a lot to cast on!

With this pattern, I couldn’t figure out how to cast on less stitches. Besides the number of stitches to cast on, there are other variables to factor in such as the chart repeat which is a multiple of 15 stitches and the crown decreases which are a multiple of 12. This is too big of a math problem for me so, I decided to downsize by using size 3 and 5 needles instead of sizes 4 and 6.

I nailed the size! Before blocking, the hat was very snug. After blocking, the hat loosened up and it fits great.

Yardage for adult small hat: size 3 and 5 needles

• Gray: 60g, 148 yards
• Black: 7g, 18 yards
• Yellow (hat body): 9g, 23 yards
• Yellow (pom-pom): 12.5g, 30 yards
• White: 2g, 5 yards