If your knitting fingers are itching for a project that’s fast and fun, have we got a vintage hat pattern for you. It comes from a 1965 booklet called Hits in Hats to Knit and Crochet (Revised Vol. 92) from the Bernhard Ulmann Company, better known to us as Bucilla.
I spent some quality time with my collection of vintage knitting booklets looking for something cute, jaunty and easy so I could peacock around wearing it in short order. This particular vintage hat pattern met those criteria. It’s knit with BIG yarn on BIG size 15 needles It has a tassel. It has a combination elf/pixie/pirate vibe.
Is this pattern good for a beginner? Yup. The making, shaping and finishing are really easy. I haven’t knit in so long you could call my knitting skills vintage (20+ years) and they needed as much dusting off and polishing as a silver plate teapot that’s been sitting on a basement shelf for that long. A few video tutorials to refresh my memory got things started, but the size of the needles and thickness of the yarn made it super easy to get back in the groove. A pro knitter could crank this hat out in a couple hours at most, a novice or rusty knitter like me will take longer.
The yarns specified, Bear Brand or Fleisher’s Gigantic or Botany Colossal, were all super bulky wool yarns, which is considered a yarn weight of 6 in modern yarn. My local yarn store steered me to Malabrigo Rasta, a super bulky merino wool that’s hand washable and forgiving. Although the pattern calls for stripes, I decided to go with one color. Red is a good winter color.
This pattern is so zippy and stressless that you could whip up a batch for your entire gang. Bookmark this post for summer when you are looking for projects for the holidays. Happy knitting!
