Over the holiday break, I redid my yarn inventory and realized that I own way too much yarn. Somehow, even though I have been trying hard to only buy yarn when I have a designated project, I still have a giant stash of new and partially used skeins. I really need to start choosing projects to work through it, so I decided to start with this cabled stash-busting striped project.

• 61g / 71m of Caron x Pantone – a bulky weight (5) yarn (above: Provincial Lilac)
• Size 9 (5.50mm) knitting needles (I used Knitter’s Pride 60cm circulars)
• Size 10 (6.00mm) knitting needles (I used Knitter’s Pride 60cm circulars)

Pattern by Alexa and Emily at Tin Can Knits

Once again, I made a change to the needle sizes, mostly because I don’t actually own 10.50mm needles. Who knew that it was such a desirable size? Anyways, I kept the smaller 5.50mm needles for the brim, but switched to use my 6.00mm needles for the body of the hat. Other than that, I didn’t make any changes to the existing pattern. I really appreciated that the decreases were worked in a way that the cabling pattern was maintained! I haven’t come across that in many toque patterns, and thought that was very nice of Alexa and Emily to include in a free beginner-friendly pattern.

For those of you more curious about the amount of yarn used per colour, I used 12 to 13g of the dark brown and the white, and 15 to 16g of the light brown, lilac, and silver. I think that you could probably do this toque with fewer colours, and it would still look really cute! Once again, removing the pompom would also save you some yarn, as the pompom here was about 9g.

I had my doubts about this toque since it look so small on the needles, but the cables mean that it has a lot of stretch! I found it comfortable to wear as an adult, but noted that it was pretty snug. I think it could double as a preteen sized hat or as a hat for smaller adults. I remember loving the colour pairings of these Caron x Pantone sets, and was sad to see this line discontinued. The yarn also feels heavenly, but does split quite easily, which is why my pompom looks a little frayed. Are you naturally talented in pairing colours, or are you like me and gravitate towards the same few combinations each time?

Until next time, happy crafting!