Every Pot Has a Lid

This is my fantastic, awesome, gorgeous new hat. Which I love. Can you tell?

It only took three tries to get the brim right. No thanks to a certain designer whose initials stand for Annie Modesitt, and who created instructions for what is probably the weirdest hat brim ever in the history of knitted hats. So I ignored hers and made my own. Nyah, nyah.

The body of the hat comes from her pattern, more or less, found in knitscene fall 2006 (the central park hoodie issue). I started on size 8s and switched to 9s when I began the crown shaping. I used 9s for the brim, too. The yarn is malabrigo chunky, colorway whale's road.

I made the brim in basically the same way I would make a short row toe on a toe-up sock. I picked up stitches at the band across the forehead -- that was the hard part, to be honest, because getting the right number of stitches there took some trial and error. Then I knit short rows until I had a double-sided cup which, when flattened smooth, is exactly the shape and size I wanted.

I thought it might need some kind of buckram or something to stiffen the brim, but as it turns out, knitting chunky yarn on size 9s yields a fabric firm enough to stand on its own.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to block it. Anyone have any ideas?