I was looking around the web at all the cool geek knitting patterns, and decided there weren’t enough astronomy ones. So I designed a Solar System Hat.
This one was made with “double knitting”, so it’s actually reversible. I think you could do it with other colorwork techniques, though. I used Dalegarn yarn: Falk #5646 for the dark blue and Baby Ull 2203 pale yellow. Both are superwash. The blue is actually a slightly larger gauge than the yellow, my reasoning being that the inside is a slightly smaller radius than the outside. I used size 2 (2.75mm) needles from KnitPicks and ended up with 6.5 stitches per inch. My head is about 23”, and it ended up about right, or a little big on me.
The pattern (PDF) actually only shows the sides and doesn’t address the top. There you just decrease quickly -- I had 12 decreases every other round. Near the middle, switch to yellow to complete the dot in the center of the circle that represents the Sun.
Speaking of which: a guided tour. Starting at the bottom, my cast on row represents the Oort Cloud, the outermost bit of the Solar System. Inside that is the Kuiper Belt, where Pluto is. Then come the 4 outer planets: The symbols for Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, enclosed in circles. Then another row of dots that represents the asteroid belt, which is between Jupiter and Mars. Then we have the inner, terrestrial planets, again enclosed in circles. At the top, a circle with a dot in the center -- the symbol of the Sun.
Hope you enjoy!
Solar System Hat
