Invertible Knobbly Sun Flower Hat

Look, I didn't forget to post this weekend(ish)!  To be fair, I had intended to post on Saturday but as I've mentioned before I live in Oklahoma and we've been rather busy with the weather.  I hate tornadoes.  I've been living in OK for almost 16 years now and I'm still not used to them.  I was twitchy all weekend; partly because of the weather and partly because the storms have been nighttime storms which equals me staying up a lot later than I'm used to.  Having advanced warning is great until you realize there's still not a damn thing you can do about it.  All you can do is cling to your emergency plans because they're the only thing that makes you feel less helpless.  I worry about things enough as it is, I don't need the extra crazy severe weather brings.  This is why I prefer earthquakes.  No warning.  They hit, they do what they're going to do, they go away, and all your stuff is still in roughly the same place. Sure, they may be buried or water logged or on fire but there is an identifiable pile that was your house.  Tornadoes can do that too, but generally they choose not to.  Why should they when they can easily strew your things all over the county (sometimes even other counties) or they just pulverize everything and you never see it again?  ...Aaaaand the news just referred to what tornado hit areas look like as "as if houses have been put in a blender".  That's all manner of reassuring.  Yep, I'm writing a blog post as I wait for the weather to get to me.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, of course the time is 3am so I may not be thinking very clearly.  And it looks like I've got another hour or two of waiting.  Ye gods but I hate this.

There was a lot more rambling in there but it became progressively less coherent, even for me, so I took out a bit.  Suffice it to say that many hours and much lost sleep later, the storms passed.  My home and family suffered no damage and it only took a little while to return to a semblance of normality.  Now, on to the pattern!

I must say I've surprised myself.  This hat is extraordinarily normal for something made during a marathon of Stanley Kubrick movies.  I started it when I was watching A Clockwork Orange (1971) and it took me 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Spartacus (1960)  before I got it finished.  It took a lot more time to make than most of my other hats, and a lot more yarn than I had expected, but I like how it turned out.  It's got a good shape and looks different from the other hats that I've made lately.  Makes me wish I had made it in a color that I like more.  Not that I dislike yellow, but it isn't my favorite.  If it weren't for my purple hair I don't think I could wear it at all which would be a shame; it's a neat hat.  You can get two very different looks out of this one based on which side you have facing outward.  I noticed while I was making the popcorn sts that the back of them looked really pretty too and I altered the pattern slightly to make sure the 'wrong' side looked as nice as the 'right' side.  That actually makes it really different from a lot of the reversible hats out there. 

The majority of reversible patterns you come across will either be identical on both sides or will have an identical pattern but inverted colors (where it was red on side A it's blue on side B and vice versa).  This hat has the same overall shape on both sides but the texture is wildly different.  Since the hat isn't really the same on both sides, I opted to not call it a 'reversible' hat, but rather an 'invertible' hat.  I think it's a better word for what the hat actually does as you have to turn it inside out to get the other style.  All that texture does something else, it helps to make this hat very, very warm.  Popcorn stitches take a bunch of yarn and make lots of air pockets and that helps to trap heat.  I'm not sure if one side is warmer than the other or not, and I'm not entirely certain how to test that.  If I had to guess I would say that wearing the hat with the knobbly side in should be warmer because all those popcorns will be inside the warm airspace of the hat but, again, I'm not really sure.

2 in 1 Hat:  Invertible Knobbly/Sun Flower Hat

Fits a 22 inch head as a tam but should be able to go bigger if it's worn as a beret.
Materials:
145 g (about 270 yards) Caron Simply Soft
I hook

Gauge:  Measured from the flat side, popcorn cluster is 1/2 inch wide and 3/4 inch tall.

Popcorn Cluster (pc) Pattern:

Make a partial double crochet as follows (yo, bring up yarn through st, yo, pull through 2 loops leaving all other loops on the hook) seven times.  You should have 7 partial dc's on your hook and 1 loop from the ch1 of the previous cluster (excepting only the first pc on each round, it will have 7 loops total).  Yo and pull through all loops on your hook.  One popcorn cluster made.

For pcs at the beginning of the round substitute ch2 for the first of the seven partial dc's.

Pattern:
ch2
Round 1:  8sc in first ch.  Join.  (9 sts)
Round 2:  Starting in the join, 2sc in each st around.  Join, turn. (18 sts)
Round 3: Starting in the join, make a pc followed by a ch1 in every other st.  Join, turn. (9 pc's)
Round 4-5:  Repeat Rounds 2 and 3.
Round 6:  (Sc, 2sc in next st) around.  Join, turn.
Round 7-8:  Repeat Rounds 3 and 6.

Round 9:  Repeat Round 3. 
Round 10:  (Sc 2 times, 2 sc in next st) around ending on the second sc.  Join, turn.
Round 11:  Repeat Round 3
Round 12:  Ch 1, work in sc around.  Join, turn.
Round 13: Repeat Round 3.
Round 14-15:  Repeat Rounds 12 and 3
Round 16:  Ch1, work in sc decreases around.  Join, turn.
Round 17-18:  Repeat Rounds 3 and 16.
Round 19:  Ch1.  2 sc in each st around.  Join, turn.
Round 20-22:  Ch1, sc around.  Join, turn.
Bind off.  Weave in ends.