Several months ago, my brother said to me in his usual way: "make me a toque."

I looked at him, puzzled.  I'd never heard of a toque before.  Little I knew that "ear flap hat like they wore in Fargo" was technically called a toque.

Unfortunately his request was received when I was just starting to knit for some baby shower gifts and ultimately I decided to knit him his hat as part of his Christmas present.

I asked him what type of toque he wanted and he sent me this picture.... the Tough Guy's Toque

WTF.

Several google searches of toque hats did not produce one quite the shape of this hat.  The flappies are wider and the crown seems to be shorter than most of the toques I could find.  I'm sure that there is one that I could have made do with, but when I'm trying to replicate something I tend to get really anal retentive about it.    So I decided to make up my own pattern.  I essentially did the knitting version of playing a song by ear.  I kept a photo of the toque in front of me and started knitting.  I did some initial measurements to figure out what I would need to cast on in order for it to fit his head and figured out the size of the flappies based on the overall size of the hat.  I printed out the picture and took some measurements to get a general idea of the proportions for the stripes.

Finished hat on my brother

Here's how I did it:

I used Caron Simply Soft in Red and Mango, less than 1 skein of each (though not much less :p) and US 8 circular needles. 

On 8s the gauge of this yarn is 18 sts = 4 inches.  My brother has an unusually round melon, and I asked him to measure his head so I could make sure it had the right fit.  Good thing too, the average hat pattern is based on an average adult head circumference of 19 inches, and his is 24 inches.  So did a little math and ended up with needing to cast on 108 sts for the brim of the hat.

When I looked at the original picture, it appeared that the flaps were a each at least 1/4 of the overall circumference of the hat.  So I divided 108sts by 4 to figure out the starting point for my flappies (27 sts each).  Since I wanted them to flare a little bit I cast on more than 27 (but I honestly don't remember how many more) then after a few rows I decreased so that I was at 27 sts.  I started out with about 4 rows of the Mango, then joined in the Red.  I opted to work with two balls of Mango, one on either end, rather than running the Mango along the backside of the flaps.  I started out doing it that way, but because the Simply Soft is so soft, I found that it pulled too easily with the additional yarn woven behind, thus distorting the shape of the flap.  I kept a border of 4 sts of Mango on either end, while working the Red in stockinette until the flaps measured about 4 inches (once again, I don't remember exactly how much, but it's around 4).

I moved the first flap to a stitch holder while I worked the second one, then with both ready, I started the brim by casting on 27 with mango, knitting across the 27 sts of the first flap (keeping with the mango border/red main section pattern), casting on another 27 sts in mango, and knitting across the 27 sts of the second flap, just as I did the first.  I then switched over to red and continued to knit in the round until the red section measured about 2 inches.  I changed to mango, knit 4 inches, then switched to red for an inch, back to mango for an inch, and then back to red for the last 2 inches, over which I shaped the crown of the hat.

Then made and attached an orange pom to the top and wove in the ends.  And voila!  Tough guy touqe replica!

I realized today I haven't posted anything in a while (ok, a whole month)... but I have a few good excuses.  First of all, it's almost Christmas and I've been hard at work on knitting some Christmas gifties.  Second, my laptop kicked the bucket sometime around Thanksgiving and I'm eagerly awaiting Santa's visit as I hear there will be a new one under the tree for me.  As such, I'm sans place to upload photos to as I'm on a borrowed laptop that I don't want to bombard with pictures of my knitting.

Well, okay... maybe just a few...

Why yes, that is a beckoning cat in the background...

My dear friend Audra is expecting her first baby in February, and her shower was on Black Friday.  Audie is expecting a little boy, which is super exciting for me as I've only been knitting for little girls.  :p

When I saw this tutti-frutti colored yarn (Bernat stretch) I absolutely had to turn it into something for baby.  This is the first time I've knit something entirely off the top of my head and not following a pattern.  I think it turned out pretty cute... and here's hoping it fits!

The inspiration for the whole project!

More importantly, a baby boy finally gives me a reason to use this!  Many many months ago I was in JoAnn's buying yarn, and found this adorable blanket binding on the clearance rack.  Seriously got the whole thing for something like three bucks.  It was awesome.  But I had nothing to do with it and so it has sat on a shelf waiting for Audra's happy news. :-)   

Since she's having a winter baby, I wanted to knit something super soft and snuggly to keep baby warm.  I wandered the yarn aisle, groping skeins, until I found the perfect textures in colors that coordinated with my blanket (Lions' Brand Quick and Cozy in Oatmeal and Velvetspun in Bluebell).

As with the hat, I didn't follow a pattern.  I knew I wanted stripes, and decided to alternate stripes of garter stitch and stockinette to play up the difference in textures.  For a blanket, this was a pretty quick knit, thanks to large needles and bulky weight yarn. :-)  However, when it came time to stitch on the binding, my sewing machine and bulky yarn were not making nice, and there were a lot of stops and restarts and frustrated grunts on my end.  I did not get the binding stitched on quite as I would have liked... but all in all happy with how it turned out.

Blanket without binding

Finished blankie with binding... and my newest DSW order waiting to be opened. :p

funky monkey

Then to go along with the blankie, I decided to use the left over yarn to knit up a stuffed toy monkey.  Once again, didn't work with a pattern, just knitted two balls, one a bit smaller than the other, then created arms/legs and hands/feet by knitting an I-cord then flaring it out at the ends to sort of make little balls at the end of each limb.  Once I got the ears/face done he sorta turned out a little more bear-ish than I intended... almost like the love child of a bear and a monkey... but still cute.