Garter Shaped Hat

What do you do when a loved one (who doesn’t knit) approaches you in early December and says, “Hey, don’t you think it would be fun to give all of the guys in my family matching hand-knit hats for Christmas?”

In my case, when the loved one was my husband, I decided to see if I could fulfill his unspoken request without laughing - or crying.

I needed a hat that would fit lots of head shapes and sizes and wouldn’t take too long to make (I had five of them to get through in a few weeks, after all). I landed on this uniquely-constructed hat, with sideways garter stitch and short-row shaping providing not only a great hat shape but also the same stretch as ribbing - without a single purl stitch in sight to slow down the process.