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How to Knit a Hat

You have yarn. You have needles. You have cold ears on a blustery day. (Or you’re having a bad hair day. It happens to the best of us.)

How do you make a hat out of thin air, without a pattern? How do you move from knitter to designer? How do you become the master of your hat destiny?

That’s easy. Let me explain.

First, you cast on. (Simple, right?) There are two ways to figure out how many stitches to cast on. The first one is very mathematical and by-the-book, and the second one might make you laugh — but hey! It worked for me for years, and it’s very fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, which can really come in handy sometimes. Right?

So, method one: Knit up a gauge swatch. If you’ll be knitting your hat in the round, you knit your gauge swatch in the round. If you want to knit your hat back and forth on straight needles, knit up your gauge swatch in the same manner. Once you know how many stitches per inch that particular yarn works up to on those particular needles, you simply measure the head you’re knitting for. If it’s 20 inches around, and your gauge is 5 stitches per inch, then that’s 20 X 5, which is 100 stitches. Easy peasy. To recap, multiply your head circumference by your stitches per inch gauge, and you have the number of stitches to cast on to fit that head with that yarn.

Now, the second method. (Don’t laugh!) I seriously used to just cast on my stitches, using either the long-tail method or the knitted-on method, then hold them up to my head to see if it looked about right. The only catch is, you have to know how that cast-on method will change once it’s been knitted for a few rows. I found that the long-tail method would give me a fairly accurate reading if I [somewhat] evenly spread the stitches out on the needle in a way that was not too stretched or too crowded. But with the knitted-on method, I had to stretch the stitches as far apart from each other as possible to see how long they’d be once knitted up. Then, I’d hold the needle up to my head and swing it around from a beginning point at the back, pivoting it around my head to see if half the stitches would reach to the centre of my forehead.

Yes, I really did that.

The next step, once you have about enough stitches on your needles, is to make sure they’re divisible by either 9, 10, or 11. If they’re not, fake it. Either drop a stitch or two off, or add a stitch or two on. You’re planning ahead right now for when you get to the decreases at the crown. (p.s. For adults, multiples of 10 or 11 are best, and babies’ or preemies’ hats are probably better with 9 or even 8. Kids are in between, so pick whatever you want.)

Once you have your cast-on number in a happy place, you’re ready to choose the edge. If you want a rolled edge, just start knitting in stocking stitch (knit the right-side rows, purl the wrong-side rows if you’re knitting flat, and just knit every row if you’re knitting in the round). If you want it stretchy, try some ribbing. (Just make sure the ribbing you choose divides evenly into your stitch count. One-by-one ribbing will work on any even number, and two-by-two will work on any even number which you can then divide a second time evenly, like 60 or 80.) If you want it a little loose, garter stitch will work. Or, you could just start into a lace repeat that goes with the number of stitches you cast on. Really, there are no limits.

You work in that edging until you’ve had enough, then you switch to something else if you so desire. Maybe you want ribbing for two inches, then stockinette for the rest of the hat. Or maybe you’d like a hat that’s ribbed right up to the top. Maybe you want to plan on your hat being really long so you can fold the bottom up, or maybe you’d prefer a hat that ends above your ears. It’s so completely up to you now! You don’t need no stinkin’ pattern anymore.

The only other thing you’ll need to do is decrease at the crown. Basically, when you’re about 2 inches away from the top of your head, start to decrease. Try the hat on to see if you’re there, or just eyeball it. If you’re making a baby-sized hat, you probably won’t even need 2 inches to decrease. My subconscious rule of thumb, which I’m just now realizing to myself for the first time in order to communicate “how I do this,” is to knit about 3/4 of the hat length, then use the final 1/4 for the decreasing. Knit stitches are such amazing, naturally proportioned things. Now matter what yarn I’m using, or what stitch count, or what size needles, that ratio seems to just work. Try it out. (And for goodness’ sake, tell me if I’m wrong! But I bet if I am, it’s just by a little bit.)

Here’s another tip: if it looks too short and fat, it probably is. Think about it. We are people who are constantly looking either in the mirror at our own heads or at other peoples’ heads. You know what a head should look like. If you think the hat doesn’t look like a head shape, you’re probably right. If you think it looks about normal, you’re also probably right.

Now, to the specifics of decreasing. Remember when you made sure your cast-on number was divisible by either 9, 10, or 11? Here’s where you take advantage of that. Let’s say you’ve chosen multiples of 11 (which are quite fool-proof, if you ask me). You’re going to *knit 9, k2tog* all the way around your hat. That’s right. If you’ve cast on 99 stitches (which is a perfectly normal adult-size number using worsted-weight yarn and size 6 or 7 US needles), you’ll repeat that decrease section 9 times because 99 divided by 11 is 9. Multiples of ten mean a *k8, k2tog* around strategy, and multiples of nine mean — you guessed it! — *k7, k2tog* around.

Do your decrease rounds every other round so they’re not all squashed together. (Unless, of course, you want to try something different and decrease really quickly in the last inch of your hat. Hey, you could call it a “design element.”) Every subsequent decrease round, you will, of course, be knitting fewer stitches between each k2tog. One fewer stitch per repeat, in fact. (Picture “k8, k2tog; k7, k2tog; k6, k2tog; k5, k2tog…” and so on, down to “k2tog” all around.) Once you’ve decreased down to your last *k2tog* around, don’t knit another round. Just stop, cut your yarn, thread the end through the rest of your stitches, and draw it tight. Wow. You just made up a hat. All by yourself.

(If your hat was knit in the round, you’re done. If you knit it flat, then add one more step: sew the seam. I use a flat stitch to sew my seams shut. Your best bet is to have a good knitting reference book around with a couple options in it so you can pick and choose which one will look best with the stitch pattern you’ve chosen.)

Now, since we’re being creative and rebellious by making up our own darn hats, feel free to fiddle with the decreases, too. Why not try ssk and have the decrease lean the other way? Or why not decrease in whatever pattern you’ve chosen? When I make a hat that’s ribbed right up to the top, I do my best to keep the flow of the ribs going for as long as I can. I still take about 2 inches to get the decreases done, but I might space them out in different ways. Really, yarn is pretty forgiving stuff. And if it’s not, then I’m the boss! I can just rip the stupid stuff out and do it over again. Who does this hat think it is, anyway?

Right. So, my late-night tantrums aside, I hope you’re starting to get the picture here. Hats are the perfect project on which to try out your designing skills. (Well, except for scarves. I mean, they don’t even have decreases, for goodness’ sake!) And once you get comfortable with the basic structure of a hat, you can start to really push the limits with stitch patterns and other random embellishments.

And now that you know all my secrets, I’ve probably put myself out of business before I’ve even really begun. But I am deciding not to care because knitting is just so darned awesome, and everyone should love it as much as I do.

So there.

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Zimmermania: I finally get it!

Why is it that I sometimes need someone else’s permission to be confident?  There it is: the truth about me.  I constantly need to either  talk myself into being confident, or let someone else do it for me.  It doesn’t come naturally.  Thank God it can come by outside means!

I am currently reading Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitter’s Almanac, and now I know what all the fuss is about when it comes to EZ.  It seems like every knitting forum online eventually mentions EZ’s technique for this, or EZ’s pattern for that.  Well, this EZ book was the cheapest one on Knit Picks, and it contained the pattern for a sweater that I wanted to knit for the upcoming baby girl, so I bought it.  I splurged all of $7.50, and I think it’s the best knitting money I’ve ever spent.  (Well, except for maybe that grey merino that is now my favourite cardigan; but I guess that’s a fish, and the book is a fishing rod, to borrow from that old metaphor.  You get my point.  I hope.)

Said EZ sweater: February baby sweater on two needles (but I did the sleeves in the round because I hate seams.)

Listen to this:  “Don’t place unlimited credence in us knitting-instruction-writers, or believe everything in print to be infallible.  We do our best, but it may easily be that your best is better than ours.  Don’t hesitate to improve on us” (p.102).  Isn’t that wonderful?  Elizabeth Zimmermann herself, the guru of modern knitting, thinks I can do better.  Thinks you can do better.

I admit, this particular book isn’t for beginning knitters.  EZ assumes that the reader knows a lot about the basics of knitting, and if I had read it ten years ago, I would have been lost.  But, as a baby “unventor” trying to figure things out and make some of my own really great patterns, it’s the perfect book for me.

Here are, for your entertainment and encouragement, some things I have learned while designing:

There is nothing new under the knitting sun.  I might come up with some pretty new sweater, but it’s just a combination of basic sweater techniques and basic stitch patterns that already existed.  Every baby sweater I looked up on Ravelry for inspiration convinced me of that.

Anyone can design, if they really want to.  (If they have really poor taste, their designs might look terrible, but they’ll still be designs!)  It just takes a little extra knowledge about the basic workings of things.  Oh, and knowing some tips and tricks helps, too.  For instance: do you know how to do an edge stitch so your back-and-forth work looks neat and straight at the sides?  Simply slip the first stitch as if to purl, then knit the last stitch of every row.  That’s it.  And you’ll be rewarded with a neat little chain of stitches travelling up the side of your work.  That neat little chain, if employed on heel flaps, will also make it easier and neater to pick up your stitches for the instep, especially if you twist them to avoid holes.  Now that wasn’t hard, was it?

Math.  *sigh*  Math skills are quite useful, after all, especially when getting things to be the proper size and planning out pattern spacing.  Did you know that you could change any of my preemie patterns to fit an adult simply by re-calculating the gauge?  For instance, the Tulip Hat is basically a repeated pattern of ten stitches.  Knit out a tiny one, measure it, then measure your own head.  Figure out how many more repeats of ten you need to fit yourself, then add that many to the hat.  Knit in the pattern until you’re about 2 or 2 1/2 inches from the top of your head, then start decreasing.  Ta-da!  You’ve just modified a pattern.  You’re already part designer.

I was pretty scared of gauge when I first started knitting.  I ignored it if I could, to be honest, and frankly I’m lucky that some of my knitted sweaters actually fit their intended owners.  But now I know: in designing, gauge is a big deal.  It makes everything easier.  For instance, if I want a sweater with a 40-inch chest, and my gauge swatch tells me that my yarn knits up at 5 sts/inch, I simply multiply 5 by 40 to find out how many stitches I’ll need in that 40 inches:  200.  Now, wasn’t that easy?

EZ mentions in her book that a hat is usually about half the circumference of a sweater, so in my determination to design a sweater for the new baby girl, I decided to knit a test hat.  I had picked a couple patterns from a big pattern book I have, and I incorporated them into the hat.  Since I wanted to knit the sweater from the top down (because the lace pattern looks better upside down), I started the hat at the top, too.  I used that little hat to experiment with how to increase in seed stitch without ruining its effect.  I discovered a couple things I would not do on the sweater, and I kept going.  When I switched to the lace pattern to see how it would look with the seed stitch, I realized that the lace would pull in the seed stitch and make it pucker.  Since I don’t want the bottom of my sweater to be narrower than the top, I now know that I’ll have to increase right before switching from the seed stitch to the lace repeats.  All this from a tiny little hat! And not from a useless square of fabric!

Here's my test hat. Sweater to come!

(Amazingly, the hat turned out wearable and even cute.  I am even more encouraged to keep experimenting.  My sister even wants one in her size, since she “hates hats that hug her head too tightly and likes the bubbly look at the top of this one.”)

So, let me encourage you, as EZ has encouraged me:  go for it!  Change things, make things up, and unvent to your heart’s content.  It’s pretty awesome.

More of the hat. I'm just so pleased with my first real "unvention!"