I needed a pick-me-up project and with the global warming and all, I definitely needed a light, soft hat that wouldn’t overheat my head and leave me sticky and half-cooked.

Used 1.5 skein, used the remaining half to improvise a matching neckerchief. Had to cast off in a different weight and color scrap yarn though…

MODS:

• I cast on using the crochet hook cast on method, and kept knitting back and forth, without joining. I only joined AFTER ‘sewing’ the picot band together.

• I made the initial ‘faux-picot’ band much wider (9 rows of stockinette before folding) and on the YO - K2TOG row, I used double wrap YOs, then dropped the extra wrap. This resulted in much larger ‘holes’ and made the little teeth much more pronounced and even.

• Before ‘fake-sewing’ the band, I placed elastic tape in the tunnel created by the two layers of knitting.

• To get a nice and even edge, after folding the band, I took a crochet hook and threaded each stitch on the needle through its corresponding cast-on chain. Then I replaced the stitches to the needle. There! No hassle, no effort, no hand-wringing, no-sew folded picot edging.

Since I already had elasticity, I skipped the ribbing part (which doesn’t look so great in cotton blends anyway) and improvised some fake-lace panels (sheesh, there’s a lot of ‘faux’ and ‘fake’ in this hat!)

My stitch count was higher than the original 88, around 96-ish or so. I kept knitting in pattern and decreasing to the very top, since the original decrease method produced holes that were too large for this yarn/needle combo and made my head look flat.