Ursula hat experiment

Some mornings I leave the house feeling like I've fallen into a bin of knitwear and come out with whatever fell on. Bright blue hat, stripy scarf, patterned gloves… you get the picture. My one staple item lately has been the Ursula mittens I made over Christmas. The more I wore them, the more I felt they need some matching items. I wanted to make a hat but had to come up with my own pattern as Ursula is only available in mittens and a cardigan.

My hat is based on the following:

• Ursula Mittens pattern - for the colour work
• Snawheid hat pattern - for the sizing and hat shaping

I simply took the number of stitches from the Snawheid pattern and altered it to be a number divisible by the pattern repeat from the Ursula Mittens. It only worked out to be a few stitches less in the end. I worked slightly fewer rows to achieve the hat length I wanted.

On the photo above, do you see the slight bulge at the top of the hat on the left? That is a blocking error :( I think I accidentally stretched the bottom of the decreases - I'm annoyed with myself so I'm going to re-block in an attempt to sort it out when I have some spare time.

I'm pleased I have a hat to match my mittens! And I finished it just in time because we had snow yesterday - not that I need an excuse to dig out the woolies, I'd wear them all year round if I could.

Not bad for my first attempt, it turned out pretty well don't you think? It's a good fit and I'll be happy once I've sorted out my blocking error - although if I'm honest I'll probably carry on wearing it until I get around to it because it's a nice hat!

Project notes

• Pattern: based on Ursula Mittens and Snawheid by Kate Davies
• Wool: Jamieson & Smith 2ply jumper weight, 100% Shetland wool
• Wool colours: 202 (beige), FC24 (green), 9144 (pink) and FC15 (blue)
• Yardage: approx 115m (25g ball) of beige and 30m of each colour
• Needles: 2.5mm dpn, 2.75mm dpn and circular
• Project duration: 1 week

Photos: taken by Scott.