Clunky chunky....

I am not a big fan of chunky wool.  I know it knits up quickly and there are some lovely colours available.  But I am just not keen on the end result.  However, I found a few balls of chunky wool among my last bargain joblot.  I always ponder over the reasons people have for selling their unloved yarns.  Maybe someone else had the same dislike of chunky wool.

But "waste not, want not" is one of my mottoes and so I set about finding a suitable knitting pattern.  It couldn't be a crochet pattern because none of my hooks are big enough.  There wasn't enough wool for a jumper or a blanket.  That left hats and scarves.  I would personally find a chunky scarf suffocating.  So, by a process of elimination, that left hats.  I prefer to knit hats on a circular needle but, again, none of mine are big enough for chunky wool.  As I don't go out of my way to buy chunky wool, I didn't want  to buy bigger needles.

I finally settled on the stretchy hat pattern that can be found on the Operation Christmas Child webpage.  I had the right size knitting needles as I have knitted this pattern before.  Although it has to be sewn up, the pattern is so clever that the seam is almost invisible. This is a very stretchy hat pattern and it will fit most children.  I even adjusted it slightly to use up the last scraps of my chunky wool on the smaller hats in the photo.  I left off the bobbles as I am never sure how easy they are to wash.

The blue variegated wool is Robin Picasso Chunky and the other plain colours are King Cole's Magnum Chunky.  I'm quite pleased with how they turned out.  My criteria were:

• Will these hats keep someone warm?  Yes, definitely.
• Would I put these hats on a child of mine?  Yes, definitely.
• Would I have worn hats like these when I was a child?  Yes, I wore similar hand-knitted hats.
• Would my daughter have worn hats like these?  Probably not.

Three out of four is not bad and I don't really count the last one because my daughter rarely wore any type of hat.  As soon as she was able to pull off her baby hats, that's exactly what she did.

I will definitely knit this pattern again.  It can be knitted with 2 strands of dk wool together and I have plenty of that.  There are only 57 stitches per row and only 33 rows in total.  That's what I call a quick knit.