Tag Archives: Dotty Cake hat

Dotty Cake backstory: Evolution of a hat

Just a reminder, today is the last day of the introductory sale for my Dotty Cake pattern. It’s 15% off through midnight tonight on Ravelry, no coupon code needed.

I’m really happy with Dotty Cake. But it took a while to get there!

I knew I wanted to use the Dotty stitch pattern I developed for the Dotty Cowl that I designed for Knit Picks last year. And I loved the Chroma Worsted combination of Natural and Pegasus, so I wanted to use that again, too.

I cast on a guesstimate of stitches, based on my gauge from the cowl. The number seemed a bit big, but not totally unreasonable. I have a big head.

I knew I wanted a herringbone braid for the bottom edge of the hat, but I was going to have to be canny about it. I had planned to use it for the cowl, but when I was knitting the braid last year, the soft, single ply low-twist yarn wanted to drift apart in the first row of the twisty braiding process. I figured a hat had fewer stitches, so maybe it wouldn’t have enough time to drift apart.

And that’s when I finally realized…if I made the braid point in the opposite direction, I’d be tightening the twist on the first row, and then loosening it back to normal on the following row. Problem solved.

I finished the braid and began the Dotty stitch pattern, which is simple and easy to memorize. The shifting color was mesmerizing, too. This was great mindless travel knitting as I went to Vogue Knitting Live in Columbus. But as I knit, I started wondering how the heck I was going to finish the top of the hat. The Dotty stitch pattern wasn’t going to play well with my usual swirly crown decreases.

What about a pointy Santa-style stocking cap? I kept knitting as I pondered how to make that work nicely with the Dotty stitch pattern. I wasn’t inspired.

Well, what about a straight up cylinder, kitchener stitched across the top, and then bringing the two corners together like an envelope fold? I kept knitting to get the extra height I’d need, but I started to think that an all Dotty stitch hat with that much height was boring.

And then I tried on the hat and realized it was too big, even for my big head, and needed to be frogged. I had 9 inches of knitting when I finally realized this. Blergh.

So I ripped it all out.

I added more braids to the second version of the hat to make it more interesting, and that’s when I noticed that it looked like a layer cake. That was a happy accident!

Still, the crown shaping had to be addressed. And it needed to work for two sizes. The diretionality of the swirl was giving me fits, so I decided to go with paired decreases for each section of the hat. Perfect!

I needed to knit a smaller size for heads smaller than mine, so I could make sure the crown decreasing would work for that, too. I used the Malabrigo Worsted that wasn’t working for the brioche project I was playing with earlier this fall.

Sometimes a design jumps right off the needles. And sometimes you wrestle it to the ground. Dotty Cake took a while to work out, but I’m so glad it did. Happy knitting!

Introducing: Dotty Cake

I’m in love with my new hat!

Dotty Cake is a fun to knit hat that combines herringbone braids and slip stitch dots. The crown is fairly flat, like that of a tam. The braids create sections, making the hat look like a layer cake! I find that the flat crown is more flattering on me than a traditional closely fitted beanie.

Dotty Cake is knit in the round from the bottom up. It’s a quick knit in worsted weight yarn. I used Knit Picks Chroma Worsted for this larger hat, in Natural and Pegasus.

This smaller hat is knit in Malabrigo Worsted in Sunset and Malamba. Only one color is used per round in the Dotty stitch sections. The pattern includes a video tutorial for the herringbone braids.

The hat is meant to fit with a bit of negative ease; I’m wearing the 19” hat on my 22” head.

The Dotty Cake pattern is on sale for 15% off through December 12, 2019, no coupon code needed. You can find the Ravelry page here.

Thank you to tech editor Meaghan Schmaltz, and test knitters Ann Berg, Susan Schwartzenberger, Jae Tauber, and Nan Wagner. And thank you to my sister Sharon Hsu for taking pictures of me!