The Geocaching Beanie is a tribute to my dad’s favorite hobby, geocaching. I’d been working on the design since 2014 but only started knitting it at the beginning of September 2015. Then I found out the parents were coming to visit 2 weeks sooner than planned! Yikes! But 150+ hours and 45,792 stitches later the deed is done and I’m thrilled with the result (and so is Dad!)
The hat features iconic geocaching images: GPS’s, travel bugs, traditional caches and multi-caches. Geocaching acronyms circle the brim and the crown is topped by a compass which is encircled by my parents’ geocaching name, H.erectus&Lucy. The final touch is a metal tag (the code is blurred out in the image) sewn on to the compass arrow so that the hat can be used as a geocaching trackable.
I created the pattern* using Excel by filling in cells with different colors to represent the stitches. This probably took up about 1/3 of the entire production process. *Please note that geocaching icons and certain terms are trademarked by Groundspeak, Inc. and therefore the pattern is not for sale. Also, due to the amount of time and effort that went in to create this one-of-a-kind labor of love for my Dad, please don’t reproduce the pattern without permission. Thanks!
I used double-knitting to create an extra warm fabric for extra cold weather and to make it easier to control the tension on the colorwork. I used a superwash yarn (Cascade Heritage) so it lacked the “bite” needed for stranded knitting. Double-knitting gets around that problem. Of course, that also doubles the amount of work but it was worth it.
Trying to figure out the pattern for the compass was tricky so I printed out the pattern, taped it together and colored in the pointer. This way I could keep the edges of the pointer straight while simultaneously working the decreases for the crown.
I surprised Dad with the hat while playing Cache Me If You Can, a geocaching board game. Told him we found an extra game piece to help him play the game. The look on his face was priceless!
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