Step Into Christmas Hat - Cast On & Brim Finished!

Working on my Sky Song shawl got me thinking about all the other Miss Babs kits that I have in my stash (something on the order of two dozen), as well as a the kits above, which are also for patterns by Lisa K. Ross.  The kits above, and the yarn in the picture below are for a set of patterns that Lisa put out in November and December of 2025.  It started with the Step Into Christmas Socks, which was run as an MKAL, and I bought the kit but obviously did not knit it up at the time.  When the matching Cowl and Hat patterns came out in December I bought them and also bought the kits for those in the same colorway so I could have a matching set.  This week I decided that I needed a small project to work on when I wasn’t working on my shawl and so I pulled the three patterns into knitCompanion and started looking them over.  The first thing I did was check the yarn requirements for each pattern and compared that with the yarn in the kits.  The two kits above are identical - one full sized skein (440 yards) in the dark green, and then mini skeins (124 yards each) in the other four colors.  The hat kit just had five mini skeins.

The Hat requires:  105 yards of the dark green, 80 yards of the dark red, 25 yards of the white, 40 yards of the light green, and 45 yards of the gold.  The yarn provided in the kit should cover that easily.

The Cowl requires:  145 yards of the dark green, 105 yards of the dark red, 50 yards of the white, 45 yards, of the light green, and 120 yards of the gold.  The gold might be a bit tight, but the other colors should have plenty.

The Socks requires:  204 yards of the dark green, 137 yards of the dark red, 115 yards of the white, 49 yards of the light green, and 80 yards of the gold.  And this is where I spotted a problem - the dark red yarn requirements actually exceeds what the kit provides.  Now I have no idea (because I didn’t do the MKAL at the time) if anyone had any issues running out of that color, and I didn’t feel like searching through the forum posts to answer that question.  But the fact that I had bought all three kits certainly made my happy as I should have enough yarn to complete all three projects, even if I have to borrow some from the other kits to finish.

I started with the Hat, as the smallest of the three projects.  Now, I’ve never knit a hat out of fingering weight yarn, but whatever, I’m game.  I did not do a gauge swatch, but when I switch to the larger needles (on the next round) I’ll try it on when I’m about halfway through that round and see if it fits.  I think it will, but you never know.  At the very least it will serve as a gauge swatch for the other two projects.

The knitting has been easy and enjoyable - knitting in the round is one of my favorite things because you just keep going around and around and you never have to stop and turn the work, so the rhythm is never broken.

Pattern:  Step Into Christmas Hat by Lisa K. Ross

Yarn:  lolodidit Lil Lolo Loriginal

Needle:  US 1 (2.25 mm), US 2 (2.75 mm)