Brioche(ish)

Is it brioche? Eh, sort of. It’s brioche adjacent. It’s approximately brioche. It’s akin to brioche. But it’s not quite the same. You do one little thing different (swap in slips where you’d normally work a purl, if you really want to know), and you get that lovely field of not-quite-solid color.

Did this come about because I lost track of what I was doing, did something a little bit wrong, didn’t notice for a while, and absolutely loved how the fabric came out? Yeah, more or less. But let’s just have that be our little secret. I’m a firm believer that if you do it with enough verve, a lot of mistakes (at least knitting mistakes) come out pretty cool. This feels like a perfect example.

If you’ve done brioche before, you’ll be on very familiar ground. If you’ve not done brioche before, this won’t be any harder to learn (because really, brioche is one by one ribbing with some yarn overs thrown in for variety, it’s not nearly has hard as people make it seem). Either way, you’ll likely be playing with something new, and you’ll get to see just how much difference a tiny little change can make!

General information

This 28-page ebook includes patterns for Adjacent (the hat with the folded brim), Approximate (the hat with the straight brim) and Akin (the mitts). (Adjacent is also available as a stand alone pattern, the other two are only available as part of the set.)

Skills & scope

Ok so this does use brioche, and some people convince themselves brioche is scary (I should know, I used to be one of them). But don’t worry, because as long as you can knit, purl, slip a stitch, and work a yarn over (and as long as you don’t spend too much time talking yourself into believing it’s hard), you can totally do this. No really, you can. Plus the nifty not-quite-brioche bits are going to be new to most everyone, so we’ll all be doing something new. And we knitters are a clever bunch, and you’ve already learned lots and lots of new things, so I know you can do this too!

The pattern uses charts, so you will need to know how to follow a knitting chart.

Yarn, gauge & sizing

The hats comes in three sizes (60, 80, and 100 stitch cast ons) and are written for seven gauges (from three to six stitches per inch in half stitch increments). The mitts comes in three sizes (26, 28, and 30 stitch cast ons) and are written for seven gauges (from three to six stitches per inch in half stitch increments).

That means you can use just about any weight of yarn from fingering up through worsted, and there will be a size to fit pretty much anyone's head or wrist.

The Adjacent (the hat in with the folded brim) took about 200 yards of a chainette yarn at 4 stitches per inch. It used about 110 yards of the yellow you see on the leaves, about 90 of the blue in the background. The Aproximate (the hat with the straight brim) and Akin (the mitts) each took about 150 yards of a chainette yarn at 4 stitches per inch. They used about 90 yards of the yellow you see on the leaves, about 60 of the blue in the background.

If you’re using thinner yarn, you’ll need more yarn! I’d recommend having a total of 250 yards for bulky yarn, 300 yards for aran or worsted, and 325 yards for dk, for the hat with the folded brim, 200 yards for bulky yarn, 250 yards for aran or worsted, and 275 yards for dk for the hat with the straight brim or the mitts. And keep in mind you’ll use more of one color than the other.

Tools & supplies

You’ll need needles that let you work in the round (circulars or DPNs) in whatever size lets you get a solid fabric with your chosen yarn plus the general knitting tools you need for most projects (scissors to cut your yarn, a darning needle to weave in ends, the occasional stitch marker or bit of scrap yarn to hold stitches).