Adamas Hat

My first Adamas Shawl in bamboo, worn
this summer at a cool Northern CA beach.

My second Adamas Shawl in baby Alpaca

The first lace project I ever did was the Adamas Shawl. It was a great first lace project in that it looks far more complicated than it actually is. In terms of lace, it's simple, easy, but not so repetitive that it's boring. 

I like the pattern so much, I've since made the shawl once more and am working on a third iteration. The second shawl was a Christmas present and the third one will be put in my "gift box" - the box that I sort through when it's time to give gifts to friends. But I wear my first Adamas shawl regularly, particularly in the summer. 

This summer I was visiting an ill friend of mine in the Sacramento Area. I'd travelled from the San Francisco Bay Area where it was cool and the bamboo shawl provided just the right amount of warmth. When when I got to my friends it was too warm. So I placed it in her lap while we sat together. After a while of looking at it she asked if I could make her a hat in the same pattern. 

While I love the pattern, I would have never thought to make it into a hat on my own. My friend was a former teacher who had always encouraged my artistic talents. So sitting there with her I realized how meaningful it would be for me to turn this beautiful shawl pattern into a hat. 

To start out I cast on 8 stitches using a crochet cast-on and divided those stitches into four sections. For each section I increased by one (using Make 1) every round until I had 6 stitches per section. I then followed the instructions from the pattern for all of chart 1, with the only differences being that I excluded the boarders and did the chart twice. Of course because this was in the round instead of on flats there were no wrong side rows. From here on out, I'll refer to the wrong side rows as even rows and the right side rows as odd.

When I switched to Chart 2 I had to think of a way to prevent the hat from increasing anymore. So I started each odd row on the chart in the same column as row 1 of chart 2. I realized after a bit that I like the "center stitch" pattern that I'd started in chart 1 though so I started putting yarnovers at the beginning and end of each section for the odd rows and decreasing by doing a double centered decrease. I finished it off with a two inch 2x2 rib stitch band.

The original intention was for the hat to be a beenie, but I didn't start decreasing it in time so it turned into more of a beret. I didn't want to pull back because there weren't very many repeats of the pattern as it was.  Maybe for a beenie it'd work better to not include the "center stitch." But I rather like the way it turned out. 

Adamas Hat blocking

Adamas hat modeled