Ruth: image quality in this blog will definitely improve when spring goes on further – it is awfully dark in here in this time of year. That dark background does not help either, but it actually is a massive block of cabinets, hard to get rid off. Other wall in our lightest room is pale, but photographing to that direction needs more arrangements, so I usually end up taking photos in front of the cabinets.

Kelly: I tried to balance between looseness and grip enoug to keep the thing on slippery hair. You probably can see from these images that my hair is very fine and silky too, and I have similar problems to keep those hats on, especially when I wear my hair straight. And my head shape does not help either. I wouldn’t bet this to keep in head on stormy day, though, when weared on back on the head like in the second pic!

I purposefully chose somewhat coarse wool to add some grip. The first 3 cm or so of this hat is fitting quite closely, the volume of the “hat body” is created by increasing on the purl bands of the rib after that edge – actually the volume addition is so large that the beret shape can be easily moulded out – but if you want the pull of the ribbing keeps the shape of beanie quite easily, too. My advice would be to fit the edge band carefully to your own head, small adjustments could be done by decreasing the needle size on the first rounds, but the pattern is very easy to size down (or up) in 4 sts increments.