Kaibab Hat and Mitts

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This hat pattern is now available through my Ravelry design site. I wanted to design a pattern that incorporated some visible floats as part of the design. The photo below shows the swatch design I finally ended up with. It reminds me of southwestern woven blankets, so I named it Kaibab, after the Kaibab National Forest in northern Arizona. The hat is made with hand-dyed sock yarn from the Leading Men Fiber Arts Studio, so it makes a nice, stretchy, lightweight hat. Just the perfect amount of warmth for a cool spring or fall evening.

There are a lot of colors in this hat, which makes knitting it from scratch a bit spendy. But if you buy from scratch, you will definitely have enough of the contrast colors to make a few pairs of mix-and-match color socks afterwards. Alternatively, if you are a sock knitter, you might already have enough colors in your stash already. With 20g of each contrast color, I had enough yarn to make the hat, the mitts, and a pair of gloves and still have plenty left over for a pair of fun striped socks.

Do you like having left over yarn? I do, because I like to have lots of colors handy for testing color combinations for future projects. The swatch above was made with leftover bits of yarn and a good first to test the color combination.

There are some trick and tips for making these accessories in the videos below. The first video shows how to work the “with float in front” stitches. The second video shows how to work the increases for the thumb gusset, and the third video shows how to begin rounds 12, 13, and 14. Each of these rounds begins with the float in front.

How to work the With Float In Front (WFIF)

How to work the increases for the thumb gusset

How to work the WFIF at the beginning of the round.

I sent the hat to El Paso to get some southwestern-themed fun photos. Thanks to my models for taking the time and energy to get these great shots for me!

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