Also known as the Stashbuster Bonnet. But this one just felt like it should be named Ragtag to me. Perhaps I was thinking of the book The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning.

Believe it or not, I made this bonnet using this ribbed bonnet pattern. Here are the changes I made:

• Instead of knitting in 3×3 rib, I used moss stitch (I love moss stitch! so textury!) for the first four inches, then switched to stocking stitch for the next three inches before doing garter for the back.
• As before, I knit for seven inches instead of six before joining in the round. (Again, big head.)
• I also made the bonnet larger from ear to ear by casting on an additional six stitches. I decreased these as I ended the moss stitch section. This created slightly longer ear flaps.

The most striking thing about the bonnet, its “bag of rags” look, came because I used a variety of odds and ends of yarns in my stash, including a dark brown wool, a dark green wool, a dark blue blend, a couple of ombre balls, and even a leftover ball of glittery navy blue (used sparingly). The result is more or less the color story that I was going for. It was inspired by a hat on Pinterest made from a ball of yarn that wavered between shades of gold, brown, and grey. Making my own edgy colored hat was a lot more work, because I had to keep stopping to twine the ends of the different colored yarns together. When I get time, I’ll definitely knit this hat again, but “cheat” and buy a self-striping ball.

For now, I absolutely love this and I also love how it helps me pull off the “witchy lady” look that I am going for as I age. As you can see, it’s still cold here. A poor old woman needs a warm wool bonnet to wear when she toddles out to gather a few sticks for her meagre fire.

You may recall that a while back, I accidentally discovered that if you make zigzag stripes on a poncho in a gradient of colors, it looks like mountains receding into the distance. I’ve been wanting to make one for myself, for some time.

I discovered this nice, affordable yarn that is something like 90% acrylic, 10% alpaca. I could have done the poncho in shades of grey, and that would have looked awesome, but I already own a grey poncho and I “needed” one that was more in the orange family. So, these mountains are going to have a cloudy sky in the background, alpenglow on the upper peaks, dun lower peaks.

When I have two long rectangles, I’ll sew them together to make a poncho.