Stochastic
Published On: January 25, 2022

Ok, we’ll hit the highlights first, because I know we all have short attention spans these days.

  • Stochastic is out on both ravelry and payhip (use the code RANDOM for 10% off for the first few days the pattern is out).
  • The yarn is specially dyed just for this pattern from Gauge Dye Works, and they’re totally doing a knit along for it (but read on for more yarn info, you can absolutely make this with just about any yarn).

See? See I can be short and to the point. Occasionally.  If absolutely necessary.  Sort of.  But now that that unnatural brevity is over with, let’s explode in a shower of words.

So, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been finding the world a bit overwhelming for the last little while.  The sort of overwhelming where I very very much want to knit, but the idea of knitting anything even faintly complicated feels way too hard.  But I also have the attention span of a gnat, and if you ask me to just knit plain stockinette, I’m going to make it about three rows before I get distracted and wander off to make a cup of tea.  I’ll come back three hours later having left the car keys beside the microwave, organized half the spice drawer, started (but absolutely not finished) a load of laundry, printed out the return label for a package (but absolutely not having actually packed the box much less set it out for the carrier), and wondering why my tea is cold and why my hat isn’t any bigger.

I don’t love how my brain works, but I am fairly familiar with its tricks by this point.  And that familiarity means I can play some tricks of my own.  And this yarn? This yarn is designed in a lab to trick my brain into settling down and enjoying itself.

It starts off with a stretch of color just the right length to work the brim of a hat.  Right about the moment I’m starting to get sick of the brim, it changes over to a lovely, mellow background color.  After a little while, that background color is interrupted with Tiny Little Blips of strategically placed spiffy color.  Those blips come along just frequently enough to keep my brain from getting bored and wandering off to play in traffic. Because every time you get to a blip, you make a fancy stitch.

Now, should this be enough stimulation to hold my attention? Perhaps not. But it turns out it is enough.  And these days I’m not fighting with my brain when I don’t have to.  I’m letting my poor, tired, stressed out brain do what it enjoys.  And it turns out, it really really really enjoys this.  Cruising along, making easy fabric, and occasionally doing a little cartwheel to show off some pretty color.  Oh, and then, then you get to do a deeply satisfying hat crown.  Because that’s always tremendous fun!

And look, you totally don’t have to have This Exact Yarn to do this.  I mean I think you’ll have an awesome time, and this yarn does most of the work for you.  But if you have a regular skein of a background yarn and a mini skein or some leftovers of a contrast yarn, you can absolutely make it that way.  Or you can make it with one long gradient skein (the kind where the yarn changes color over the whole course of the skein).  Or you can even make it with a single skein of regular yarn if you’re feeling a bit subdued.

It’s really unspeakably flexible (and yes, all three versions are in the pattern). If you’re currently thinking ‘hey, I wounder if I could use…?’ the answer is almost certainly ‘yes absolutely!’  There’s an extensive discussion of options in the pattern, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble at all.  Or…or you can just get one of the skeins designed just for the hat and relax and cruise along.  Either way will absolutely work just fine!

So, just to sum up, in case you got lost in the shower of words:

  • The pattern is called Stochastic.  It’s out on both payhip and ravelry.  The code RANDOM will get you 10% off in either place for the next day or two (if you want an email with a bigger discount code the next time I put a pattern out, get on the mailing list and we’ll make that happen).
  • You can get the specially dyed yarn from Gauge Dye Works right here and it will do a whole bunch of the work for you, but you can also use a huge variety of other yarns (and the pattern tells you how).

And I truly hope you enjoy this as much as I have. It was exactly what I needed right now. And I don’t think I’m alone.

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