Working on the theory that accessories are better in sets, allow me to introduce Thither.

It’s the perfect companion to the previous pattern, Hither.  Because really, half the fun of being a knitter is having the cutest, most perfectly matched, accessories you can imagine!  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Just like the cuffs, the hat uses a really beautiful leaf pattern and plays with putting it just a bit off center.  The leaf panel is just on one side of the hat, and I’ve been wearing it with the panel off to the side (over my ear is probably the easiest way to describe it).  Though I’ve seen other folks wear hats like this with the lace running up the back, and that looks equally fetching!

Alas, the yarn I made these from (Ysolda’s Blend No. 1) is discontinued.  But the good news is that the pattern will work beautifully with most any sport, dk, or fingering weight yarn (yarns with wool respond well to blocking, and the lace looks best when it’s blocked, so you’ll want one with some wool or other animal fiber in it if you’re as much a fan of blocking as I am).  I think a solid or semi solid shows off the lace best, but if you have a more colorful yarn you love, you can totally try that too.  There’s lots of nice mellow stockinette where a more colorful yarn can have room to shine!

I was feeling nervous about having enough yarn to finish the hat when I knit mine (I made the mitts and cowl first…so I was working with the leftover bits of another project and in a discontinued yarn…that’s pretty much asking for a yarn catastrophe), so I did a few little things to get the most out of the available yardage (no folded brim, stockinette body, nice relaxed gauge to give a drapey fabric).  It worked out beautifully.  I got the hat and the cuffs from one, 345 yard skein of yarn.  Though if we’re being honest, I felt nervous the whole time I was knitting the hat.  So my official recommendation to anyone else would be to have a second skein of yarn on hand if your skein is shorter than 400 yards and you want to make the set.  Plus that extra skein of yarn will look perfect as the matching cowl that will come out to complete the set in a few weeks!

Oh, and because the folks at ravelry are super cool, they make it easy for me to bundle Hither and Thither together as a set and give you a discount on them.  For the first few days this is out, you can get the pair of patterns for $10.90 (that’s a savings of $4.00 off the price of the two patterns individually).  You don’t need a code, ravelry’s system is totally cool enough to just make it work on it’s own.  Just put both patterns in your cart and you’ll see the reduced price in your cart.  Oh, and if you bought the mitts already, whatever you spent on them when you bought them will count toward the price of the set (as long as you were logged into ravelry when you make both purchases).  Or, if you just want the hat and totally don’t want the mitts at all, you can use the code LEAFY to take 10% off the hat by itself.  Both those discounts will work until the end of the day eastern time, Friday October 5.  After that the individual discount expires and the price for the pair of patterns goes up.

And don’t worry…the cowl is coming very soon!  We’ll have you all bundled up and ready for fall by the time it gets properly cold!