Valley Yarns Swirl Hat Knitting Pattern

Valley Yarns Swirl Hat: Knitted Spiral Design

What Is Being Made

The Valley Yarns Swirl Hat is a unisex knitted hat designed by Kirsten Hipsky, finished to measurements of 20 inches around and 9 inches tall. This intermediate-level project creates a warm, earth-toned hat featuring a naturally spiraling stitch pattern that works beautifully with hand-dyed yarn. The hat is suitable for both men and women and combines functional warmth with visual interest through its distinctive cable-inspired swirl motif.

Techniques Used

This hat is constructed using several key knitting techniques that work together to create its signature appearance:

• Seamless, worked in the round: The entire hat is knitted in a continuous circle using circular needles and double-pointed needles, eliminating the need for seaming and creating a smooth, professional finish.
• Bottom-up construction: The hat begins at the brim and is worked upward toward the crown, allowing you to try on the hat as you progress and adjust the length as needed.
• Cable techniques: The swirl pattern is created using cable stitches, where stitches are slipped onto a cable needle and held to the front of the work before being knitted, creating the characteristic twisted, spiraling visual effect that gives the hat its name.
• Crown shaping: Decreases are worked into the cable pattern at the crown, using knit-two-together decreases to gradually reduce stitches until the opening is closed.

Stitches Used

The Swirl Hat employs a straightforward stitch vocabulary appropriate for intermediate knitters:

• Knit (k) and purl (p) stitches: The foundation stitches used throughout the pattern, with stockinette stitch (knit on right-side rounds) forming the main fabric.
• Ribbing: A 2x2 rib pattern (knit 2, purl 2) creates the elastic brim, which helps the hat stay securely on the head.
• Cable crosses: Stitches are slipped to a cable needle and held to the front, then worked in a specific sequence to create the swirling pattern that repeats around the hat.
• Knit-two-together (k2tog): A left-leaning decrease used during crown shaping to reduce stitch count.

Materials and Yarn

The Swirl Hat is designed to use one skein of Valley Yarns BFL Fingering Hand-Dyed, which contains 100 percent Blue Faced Leicester wool, weighs 100 grams, and provides 416 yards of yardage. The pattern calls for working with two strands held together throughout, which is achieved by winding the skein into a center-pull ball and pulling yarn from both the inside and outside simultaneously. The sample shown uses the Sherwood Forest colorway, a rich, earthy hand-dyed shade that showcases the natural color variation typical of hand-dyed yarns.

Needles and Notions

The pattern requires US size 5 (3.75 mm) and US size 7 (4.50 mm) needles. Specifically, you will need 16-inch circular needles in both sizes for working the brim and main body of the hat in the round, plus size 7 double-pointed needles for the crown shaping when the stitch count becomes too small for circular needles. Additional notions include five stitch markers to track pattern repeats around the hat and a cable needle for holding stitches during cable crosses. The gauge is approximately 4½ stitches per inch in stockinette stitch when using the larger needles with two strands held together.

Pattern Structure and Construction

The hat is worked in three main sections. The brim begins with 100 cast-on stitches divided into five sections of 20 stitches each, marked with stitch markers. These stitches are worked in 2x2 ribbing for one inch using the smaller needles. The main body section switches to the larger needles and introduces the swirl pattern, which repeats five times around the circumference of the hat. This section continues until the hat measures approximately seven inches from the cast-on edge. Finally, the crown shaping section decreases stitches using knit-two-together within the cable pattern until only 15 stitches remain, at which point the yarn is cut and drawn through the remaining stitches to close the crown. Finishing involves sewing in loose ends and optionally blocking the hat lightly.