Stephanie Pearl-McPhee made her daughter a hat like this (thank you for the inspiration!) Alternating sections of knit and purl that make stockinette’s tendency to curl up on itself a feature rather than a bug: five-row sections of it pointing this way and then that make a warmer garment in the process, little almost-tubes of wool against the cold. It also tends to take a lot of knitting to get it to create actual length. This was the new project in my hands when the stake president stopped me.

Yarn: a heavy merino here, knit on size 4.5mm (US 7). I simply knit till the yarn was as close to gone as I dared before casting off. I found it slightly overspun, so not quite so much of the Zegna Baruffa extrafine effect, but that means it will hold up to a whole lot of wear against a coat and it is definitely soft enough.