Sister's Slouchy Hat

It's kind of amazing that this post is scheduled for today when this project was made in April... I do like having a buffer of posts, but it makes me feel less topical. Oh well.

My sister asked for a "slouchy bohemian hat" for her birthday through a cunning use of nudge nudge hint hint texts. I sent her a few patterns I saw online, she sent me a few pictures of stuff she liked, and we worked it out. She wanted it in black.

Black is a tough yarn color to use as it is kind of hard to see both what you are doing and the finished design. I decided to make the Eithnie Cabled Hat from Alyse Crochet on Etsy after seeing it on Ravelry. The large cable design should read well I hope and the overall shape was close to what she had asked for.

The pattern calls for a DK weight yarn, but as most retail stores do not carry any, I went with Lion Brand's new yarn, Modern Baby, in black. Baby yarn?? Hear me out here... it is rated a Light/3 weight just like a DK would be and is very soft. This yarn also has an amazing braided looking ply to it with just a tiny bit of shine. I'm really thinking this is going to turn out nice. I got two skeins to be sure I had enough, since we plan to make the brim about twice as wide as the pattern shows. I made up a gauge swatch as soon as I got home with my H 5.00mm hook and it matched up perfectly!

There is a bit of a disclaimer on the beginning of the pattern about this being advanced, but after doing two other cabled hats, I felt comfortable going in. That said, I did have to rip it out almost to the start after row 4 since I realized I was doing hdc instead of dc... probably because my last project was entirely hdc and my muscle memory took over.

Close up of the cables.

Every row is different. That means I had to pay close attention to what I was doing. I even used a stitch marker to mark when I came to the end of the repeat section on the rows to make sure I didn't skip anything. Also, a "front post treble crochet back cross" is a thing that is hard to wrap your fingers around.

Center of back.

I got most of the way though the hat, just before the brim rows and after putting it on my head decided it was not slouchy enough. So since the row before the last is just like one I have already done, I back-tracked into the pattern and decided to do a few more rows of cables before the brim.

Motif really starting to show now.

I had to make up new ending rows into the brim since I didn't want to do a full third motif.
Once I got back to the brim I also did more rows than called for to make a wider brim. That also helped it to slouch more.

Finished!

Overall the hat is really cute looking. It is a pretty light which is good because I was worried the slouch would slowly pull it off your head all day. Not sure it is as big and oversized as she would have liked it to be...but I hope she still likes it.

Time to complete: 20 hours
Difficulty: Advanced is correct.

BONUS: She did like it a lot!

Update: Made a second one for my mom. Her's is made with Red Heart Super Soft in Teal. It is a thicker yarn than the baby one and I used a larger hook for the hat as well. Should make it just a touch larger overall. Since both the hook and yarn were larger, I did the pattern as called for without the extra rows that I added to my sisters. Love how the pattern pops in this color.