Remembering fondly a sweater my mom knit me when I was a kid that was close to the color of this hat, that I refused to outgrow, that I kept wearing till Mom finally hid it so she wouldn’t be embarrassed to have me be seen in public in it…

This idea from Knitty’s Coronet hat where you knit a cabled strip, join, and then go up from there? Version number three.  I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with the idea.

Pictures later, but, you know, if you make the body of the hat in a stretchy pattern, you can pick up those stitches and continue *without* joining the ends of the strip, simply leave them flapping around down there, and then, go back later and crochet them together (as I did). What you have, then, is a hat that can be made small for a child and then, if it’s their most most favorite hat ever and they never ever want to outgrow it–but they d0–you can go back and undo that bit of crocheting that you made sure not to overdo the job of running the ends in on. You might want to crochet a row down the ends of the strip to neaten them up a little. (I didn’t.)

There. You’ve got a hat with a brim that doesn’t have to be folded up anymore, thus adding length, you’ve got sideways stretch from the pattern you used above, and you’ve got collar-ish points at the back of the hat where the strip ends separate in a V .  If you decide to make that the front of the hat, make sure to do a jogless join at the start of each round as you’re going up.

(Don’t you love instructions that tell you what to do in the middle at the end?)