This is all set to come out next week, and I want to talk through it a bit in case you want to have your yarn ready and waiting!⁠

All the drama in this hat comes from the embroidery, the hat itself is very mellow.⁠

When you’re embroidering on your knits, you want a smooth fabric that lets you easily see your stitches. I find that blown yarns (mesh tubes with bits of fluff blown into it) give a smooth, even fabric with great stitch definition, as do many single-ply yarns. Don’t fret, you can absolutely use plied yarns if you prefer. I just particularly like embroidering on smooth yarns.⁠

All you really need is a regular, even fabric hat lets you see your stitches clearly! Basically anything that gives you a smooth, even fabric with a drape you like will work.⁠

If you want to be ready when the hat comes out, you can go stash diving now. For the body, find a hat’s worth of yarn (100g/4oz is pretty much always safe for a hat) that gives you a fabric you like in blocked stockinette at anything from 4 to 7 stitches per inch. The pattern is written for 7 gauges, so you can use anything from heavy fingering up through bulky weight yarn.⁠

As for your embroidery, I found I liked it best when I used a yarn that was slightly heavier than the one I used for the body of the hat. It helped my stitches look bold and substantial. I also liked plump, dense, round yarns better than lighter, less substantial yarns.⁠

Each panel of embroidery takes about 12 yards of yarn (six lengths of yarn, each two yards long). That could be 12 yards of the same color, or two yards each of six colors, or something in between. ⁠

I did two panels of embroidery. One used gray and yellow yarn, one used gray and blue yarn. This is a perfect place to use tiny scraps from other projects!⁠

If you want to hear when the pattern comes out,  make sure you’re on the mailing list. If you just want to get it (and all my other new patterns as they come out), check out the Rampant Nonsense tier on patreon!