DIY: Knit Tucson Hat by Kiku Corner

We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post.

I named the Tucson Hat after the desert Arizona city of Tucson. Ryan and I visited Tucson over the holidays last year. Although we went for a family wedding, I made sure we had time to visit the desert. The two weeks passed quickly!

Ryan and I spent an afternoon in the nearby Saguaro National Park, west side. We were both fighting colds, so we didn’t hike too much. Instead, we drove around the park, stopping for short walks into the desert and for photo ops.

On the following day, we spent several hours hiking in Sabino Canyon. Due to the US government shutdown, I worried that the parks would be closed. Luckily for us, the parks were open and we were able to visit. Later, I heard negative reports from more popular parks, like Joshua Tree, that had been overun, vandalized, and overflowing with tourists and garbage. Thankfully, we didn’t see any of that at Saguaro or Sabino Canyon. I also learned not to touch a teddy bear cholla, and we saw a roadrunner!

The saguaro cactus is the quintessential plant of the Southwest United States, even though it only grows wild in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and California. They can grow up to 45.3 feet (13.8 metres) and live over 150 years. Our Tucson Hat pattern shows the majestic saguaro cactus in a field of tumbleweeds. We found tumbleweeds blowing over the desert roads, and even found one in a taco restaurant when we stopped for lunch!

The Tucson Hat pattern is available on Ravelry and in our Etsy shop. It’s our second independently published pattern (after our Berlin Hat), but the first knit one. Tomiko and I decided to name all our patterns after cities. We feel this reflects our multicultural heritage and upbringing, and our love of travel.

I hope you enjoy the Tucson Hat! It includes three sizes: adult, child, and toddler. Of course, you can change your needle size to better fit you or your loved ones. Also, if you have a taller head, you can add 5 rows of stockinette before you start the colourwork chart. To knit this adult hat, I used 2.5 mm needles for the ribbing and 3.0 mm needles for the crown.

Even though this hat uses sport weight yarn, the foldover brim and the double layer of colourwork ensures that it’ll be warm. The colourwork looks best when you use two colours of contrasting values. This means that the two colours need to have a different darkness so that you can see the contrast between the two. I used a dark, evergreen green as the main colour, and a brighter, lighter green as the contrast colour in Quince and Co Chickadee.

We hope you enjoy knitting it!