Welcome, Bloomlings!

Early this past Spring, before most of the things that bloom woke up and began showing their faces, I had the idea for a hat. One adorned with little flowers — not yet in their fully-developed state, but clearly getting there. 

And a hat with little flowers on it should of course be a hat for little humans. So the first hat I knit up in this pattern was a baby hat. But… it was so adorable that I wanted one for myself, so an adult version followed. And then how could I possibly leave out the rest of the family? So in the end, Bloomlings is a hat for everyone — from the newly-sprouted to the fully mature.

I purposefully created this hat without heed to limiting the number of stitches between motifs, because my favorite colorwork trick is ladderback jacquard. I encourage you to try it if you’ve never given it a shot. It’ll make the stretches between motifs much easier to manage and much less visible. A complete tutorial on ladderback jacquard is included in the Appendix to the pattern.

And if you want a little hands-on help giving this technique a whirl, you have two options: A virtual class with Modern Daily Knitting on Friday (that includes the hat pattern!), and an in-person class at Busy Stix in Lafayette, California. So there’s really just about no excuse not to learn.

Early knitting tests have shown this hat to be just about irresistible — and many knitters have worked more than one! Maybe it’ll become your next go-to gift knit, or that potato-chip pattern you just have to work in all the different color combinations.