For this hat, I knitted “Bah! Humbug” upside down, then did several rows plain before knitting  “Peace on Earth” upright.  I knitted another two rows, then rejoined to the cast on row to make a rolled brim.  After rejoining the brim, the main body of the hat was then knitted with a reversible stitch.

Heather came up as I was finishing the second set of letters to ask what it said.   I explained the concept of the reversible hat with a saying on each side of the brim, which could be turned inside out depending on the wearers mood.  In her capacity as provider of constructive criticism, she only had two simple words: “Oh, dear!”

The actual idea for the two sayings came from a reversible Christmas ornament I found in a magazine in my brief phase as a crafter of plastic canvas.  When Jacob was a baby, I discovered plastic canvas and, after doing the ornaments from the magazine, I did a whole series of baby blocks with rattly stuff inside and 3-d crocheted animals and holes on the faces so a baby could grab on easily to the toys.  This phase scared Alan.  He had seen me as a potter, doing a two year college diploma in ceramics.  He had seen me designing knitted sweaters (Heather discovered a few in the attic and wears them regularly now).  He had seen me dabble with weaving and hand spinning.  He kept coming home in the plastic canvas phase to me excitedly showing him my new creations.  After a couple of weeks, he looked at me quizzically and said “are you sure this is actually a real craft?”.

If I had it to do over again, I would definitely leave more space between the words in the two sayings. Or I may use smaller lettering so that you can see a whole saying at once.  In designing hats, as in many other things, hindsight is 20/20.