658 Atrium Hat - Knitting Pattern for Women in Valley Yarns Sunderland

658 Atrium Hat - Knitting Pattern for Women

What is Being Made

The 658 Atrium Hat is a women's knit hat designed by Kirsten Hipsky that features a sophisticated blend of garter stitch and lace techniques. The finished hat measures 19 inches around the brim with a maximum circumference of 22 inches, offering a comfortable fit for most adult wearers. The design creates distinctive cubic shapes through the strategic combination of textured and openwork stitch patterns, resulting in a unique visual appearance that sets this hat apart from traditional knit hat designs.

Techniques Used

This hat is constructed using several key knitting techniques that work together to create its signature look:

• Bottom-up construction: The hat is worked from the brim upward, beginning with a cast-on of 96 stitches
• Seamless, worked in the round: Using circular needles and double-pointed needles, the entire hat is knitted in continuous rounds, eliminating the need for seaming
• Lace patterning: Yarn overs and decreases create openwork sections that form the cubic design elements throughout the hat
• Garter stitch ribbing: The brim features a knit-one-below, purl-one ribbing pattern that provides structure and elasticity

Stitches Used

The 658 Atrium Hat employs a variety of fundamental knitting stitches to achieve its textured and lacy appearance:

• Knit stitch and purl stitch: The foundation stitches used throughout the pattern, with knit-one-below (k1b) creating a textured effect in the ribbed sections
• Yarn overs (yo): These create the openwork holes that are essential to the lace pattern and contribute to the cubic visual effect
• Decreases (k2tog and ssk): Knit two together and slip, slip, knit decreases are used to shape the lace motifs and maintain stitch count while creating the pattern's geometric structure
• Make one (m1): Used in the increasing round to expand the stitch count from 96 to 108 stitches, allowing the hat to reach its full circumference

Materials

The 658 Atrium Hat pattern calls for specific materials to achieve the intended drape, warmth, and appearance:

• Yarn: 2 skeins of Valley Yarns Sunderland in the color Spring Willow. This yarn is 100% baby alpaca, offering exceptional softness and lightweight warmth. Each skein contains 109 yards and weighs 50 grams, making the total yardage approximately 218 yards for the completed hat
• Weight: DK (double knitting) weight yarn, which is a medium-light yarn that works well for hats requiring both structure and drape
• Needles: US size 6 (4.00mm) circular needles in a 16-inch length for working the main body in the round, plus double-pointed needles of the same size for the crown decreases when the circumference becomes too small for circular needles
• Gauge: Approximately 5 stitches and 7 rows equal 1 inch when worked in stockinette stitch and the lace stitch pattern, which is important for achieving the correct finished size

Difficulty Level

This pattern is rated as advanced beginner, making it suitable for knitters who have mastered basic techniques and are ready to tackle lace patterns and seamless, in-the-round construction. The combination of garter stitch ribbing, yarn overs, and paired decreases requires attention to detail and familiarity with reading stitch patterns, but the repeating motifs provide a manageable learning curve for those expanding their knitting skills.