I know a guy called Dean.

No, not Winchester, although that would be awesome because then I can ride shotgun in the Impala and tag along on a hunt and eat cheeseburgers and pie. But this Dean is a real life Dean. The companies we used to work with did business together and Dean was the one who took care of our clients. Never really got to know him socially, but I think we got on well enough when we were working together to still be Facebook friends years after.

Anyway, Dean saw my blog post x-posted on Facebook about the hats I made for Joji’s brother in Argentina and sent me a PM asking if I was willing to knit his family hats for UK winter. Now, that is one of the trickiest questions to ask a knitter. Why? Because there is never a straightforward answer!

In this case, however, I was more than happy to knit for Dean and his family. A hat is not very hard work. I just had to move other WIPs around. Besides, I was chomping at the bit to try and work with Wool of the Andes. I am not a fan of pure wool but this is wonderful to work with! And UK winter is the perfect weather for this wool.

So I decided to keep things simple. For Dean I made an extra long version of the Exeter Hat. My son is modelling it here and he has a smaller head than Dean but it’s ribbed all around so it has plenty of stretch. I made it longer so that it can be folded back for extra warmth on the ears. This colourway is Marble Heather.

For Dean’s wife, Natascia, I chose Rekaviður which looks more complicated that it actually is. I’m hoping that this is feminine enough. It’s not extra slouch but there’s just enough, plus it has ribbing too so it has enough stretch. This colourway is Sapphire Heather.

I took longer to settle on a pattern for little Noah. None of the baby/toddler patterns out there seemed suitable so I fell back on an old favourite, Thorpe. Perfect too since it has earflaps to keep young ears warm. I made a pompom of course, extra dense too and made i-cord strings instead of braids. I hope he likes it. I didn’t want the hat to stretch out of proportions so I put it on my son’s basketball instead of his head!

Dean, I hope you and the family get a lot of use out of these hats!