I love this hat! It’s so cozy and comfy and I find myself wanting to wear it all the time, whether the weather calls for it or not. (Though the rains have officially come now and today is most definitely a hat day, which I’m pretty pleased about.) When Ginny released her Hackberry hat pattern, I knew I wanted to knit one for myself. I had one hat that I wore all last winter, my grey Hermione hat. It’s a favorite and I enjoy wearing it, but I decided that this winter I needed another hat to throw in the mix to change things up a bit. I could switch back and forth between two hats, rather than wear the same one day after day. Grey goes with everything and I do like my grey hat very much, but this time I wanted to knit a hat with some color. Something to brighten up those grey wintertime skies in the Pacific Northwest!

First I cast on this pattern in a blue handspun yarn, but I quickly found that the handspun yarn wasn’t showing the texture well enough. I was using what I had on hand, but it didn’t feel like the yarn I was meant to knit that hat in. So, for Mother’s Day, I bought a gift for myself and ordered some yarn for the hat. (It was the first time I ever bought myself a Mother’s Day gift, but I used it as an excuse to justify my yarn purchase to myself, since I did have plenty of yarn in my stash, just nothing I had in mind for the hat.) I was thinking something magenta… a color I don’t wear that often, something different, something fun. I ordered Quince & Co. Chickadee in the color rosa rugosa.

On the screen, it looked magenta/more reddish to me, but I should have guessed from the name of the colorway- rosa rugosa. When it arrived in the mail, the color was a bit more pink than I’d expected. I don’t really ever wear pink. I couldn’t quite put my finger on the color, until I stepped outside and held the skein up next to the fuchsias. Yes! The exact color of the fuchsias in our garden. And you know what? The color has grown on me and I’ve come to really like it. It’s a warm color and it will remind me of the fuchsias in the garden all winter long. (Since then, I got a wool color card from Quince & Co. and can see all the beautiful colorways in person when I’m choosing my yarn.)

I liked the way the Chickadee yarn showed the texture of the pattern, it was definitely more of what I was envisioning, rather than the results with the handspun. While knitting the pattern, I followed the directions for the adult size, with one exception. (You can find my Ravelry notes here.) I also knit one of these hats for my friend. (I just realized that I knit a Hermione Hearts Ron hat for myself and for my sister, and then I knit a Hackberry hat for myself and for my friend, so both of my hats have matching pairs. I love that.) I’ve worn my Hackberry with my hair down, but I’ve also discovered that it’s a hat that I can comfortably wear with all my hair up, since it has room for that.

I finished my hat on the way to the beach to celebrate my birthday, in time to wear it that day, so I asked Jeff to snap a few pictures, and show different angles of that hat. (I realized while I was knitting it, that the pink specks in the turquoise blue shirt my mom got me perfectly match the hat. Little things like that make me happy.) It feels good to complete a project awhile in the making, this hat has already gotten so much use!