About a week ago, I got an email from Clare from Sister Mountain announcing her new workshop: “Design a Hat in 5 Days”. I’ve been curious about knitwear design for a long time and signed up for Clare’s sweater design workshop introduction a few years ago, but decided not to go ahead with the full course, since I didn’t feel like I had enough time to design a whole sweater. But a small project like this one could be the perfect introduction I was looking for, so I signed up! Because we would only have five days to complete the project, our homework before Day 1 was to draw a quick sketch of the hat we intended to make and to knit, wash, and dry our swatch sample. My first idea had been to use a sport-weight yarn and to try to incorporate some pretty cables, but when I realized how long it was taking me to knit my small swatch, I changed plans and opted for a bulky yarn instead. I also picked a …