The stash-busting rampage continues. It's now become my mission to use up every last ball of yarn in the house as quickly as possible. And since I'm feeling like I need a break from labour-intensive felted pieces, I'm on a hat kick.

I found this wonderful hat tutorial/formula by Kat Goldin that has finally demystified the whole hat thing for me. At the moment I'm experimenting with big hooks, which is fun because things work up so fast! I made these last week. Not sure yet what I'll do with them, but here's how easy they were to make:

Chunky slouchy hat with pompom:

I used Álafoss Lopi wool (of course).

With a 10mm hook, my gauge was about 6 1/2 stitches and 4 1/2 rows = 10 cm.

You'll need about three quarters of a ball, plus a little bit of the second colour for the bottom and pompom. You can make it less (or more) slouchy by adjusting the number of rows to your preference, or play with different stitches and combinations to make it your own.

Start with a magic ring, ch 3 and make 11 dc's into the ring, join with a sl st to the top of the ch 3 to close the circle.

(Note that the ch 3 at the beginning of each round counts as the first dc).

Rnd 2: ch 3, 2 dc into each stitch, join (24 stitches)

Rnd 3: ch 3, 2 dc into next stitch, *1 dc into next st, 2 dc into next st*, repeat * around, join (36 stitches)

Rnd 4 - 9: ch 3, dc into each st around for 6 rounds, join and ch 3 at the end of each round/beginning of next round

Rnd 10: join the second color, ch 1 and sc around, join

Rnd 11: ch 1, sc all around, join, fasten off and weave in ends