I Hope Harvard Will Be the Right Fit

Months ago my sister-in-law mentioned that she would love for me to knit a hat for her son Oscar (my 19 month old nephew). As she had no specific requests in terms of style and color, I have thinking about the hat off and on with no actual work on it--until I finally slowed down long enough to look at the Winter 2008 Interweave Knits and saw the Harvard Square Cap.


I thought it looked like a fun pattern and decided to adapt it to (hopefully) fit my nephew. I was told his head measures 19". I looked through my stash and found some fun worsted weight yarn, decided it looked comparable to the yarn used for the "Aran" version of the hat, realized that if I cast on 96 stitches instead of 108 I should get a 19" hat and went for it. I wasn't sure when to start the crown shaping and ended up starting them around 5".

I really enjoyed making this hat although it was somewhat slow going at first as I figured out the right rhythm for the stitch pattern. The pattern says to "strand very loosely--so loosely that it seems excessive." So this is what I tried to do. At first, I think I was being excessive because the contrast color stitches looked a little wonky, but I then found a good tension that turned out perfectly.

This is a picture of the inside of the hat. You can see how the blue is loose at the bottom, but lies nice and flat for most of the hat.

As I got into the hat, it actually knit up quite quickly. I enjoyed this pattern and hope that the hat will fit Oscar. It's too tall for Norm and too tight for John so I don't have any great modeled photos. I love the way the two yarns look together. The green is more woolly and the blue is more shiny so they contrast nicely. I think this yarn/stitch combination would look great on a child's pullover sweater--maybe one of these days I will make one.

Pattern: Harvard Square Caps by Sean Riley (Interweave Knits Winter 2008)
Yarn: Plymouth Encore Worsted (75% acrylic/25%wool, green--less than one skein) and Caron Simply Soft (100% acrylic, blueberry--less than one skein)
Needles: Size 4 16" circular, Size 6 16" circular and douplepoint
Modifications: I cast on 96 inches to get a 19" hat. I started the crown shaping when I reached 5" from the cast on edge.


Even though the hat looks ridiculously tall on N, I couldn't resist sharing this picture. He just looks so happy. (And, yes, he is chewing on a dog toy!)