My brother is a huge Indianapolis Colts fan, so I decided to knit him a Colts hat. I couldn't find a Colts hat pattern, so I decided to use a hat pattern and add the horseshoe.
I looked online for a charted Colts horseshoe but couldn't find one. I decided to give charting my own a try. I downloaded a Colts Horsehoe graphic and overlayed it on some knitting graph paper, tweaking it from there. What I have posted here is what I came up with.
I made two attempts at knitting this hat. In my first attempt, I found a hat pattern for a double-knit hat that I could use to make a reversible hat. I got the hang of double-knitting but found it tedious. It was great for adding a charted pattern, though, since there is no carrying of yarn to worry about. When I finally finished the hat, I was disappointed with it. It turns out that my purl stitches (the inside layer of the hat) were much looser than my knit stitches (the outside layer). Since I couldn't fix the hat, I ripped it all out and started over.
In my next attempt, I used a basic knitted in the round hat pattern. I just knit the hat in blue and used duplicate stitch to add the horseshoe after the hat was completed. This process was much quicker and turned out much better, as you can see above.
Feel free to use this chart for your Indianapolis Colts gear!
