The Knitting Fiend

I had some left over Plymouth Galway , so I decided to make a hat. Hats are quick and pretty easy to make, and winter is coming, so people need them. Plus, last year, after I posted some hat pattern generators to create patterns that let you knit hats bottom up someone asked for a generator to create a top-down hat pattern.

Presumably, some people still want to know how to knit a hat top down. So, here’s what I’ve did:

I cast on 8 stitches using waste yarn, knit a row and broke the yarn. Then, I knit a row with the hat yarn, and distributed the stitches on DPN (sock needles.)

Some may wonder why I waste time and yarn knitting a row of waste yarn.

Well, I find casting on with waste yarn helps me avoid twisting when I join; I also find having a few rows on the needles gives the DPNs some stability so they wobble a bit less my hands. So, the extra rows help me overcome my natural lack of coordination.

After distributing the stitches on sock needles, I joined, and began knitting in rounds. I began to increase stitches at the rate I calculated using my soon to be published hat pattern generator. On the first round, I worked into the front and back of every stitch, resulting in 16 stitches. After that, I sometimes knit increase rounds, and sometimes work plain rounds. It’s fairly mindless.

Eventually, the knitting grew; you can see how it looked to the right. I’d like you to notice three things:

First, I used a safety pin to mark the beginning of a round. You should just barely see near the top right corner of the “hat”. ( Marking the beginning of the round lets those of us who watch tv and drink, knit without making too many mistakes.)

Second, see how the fabric that forms the crown lies fairly flat? The rate at which you increase determines the degree of flatness of the hat. If you decrease too slowly, the hat tends to become pointy; if you decrease really slowly, it becomes a stocking cap. If you decrease too fast, you tend to create a “ruffle” or “gathers” , although that’s difficult to see when the hat is on the needles.

In any case, unless you are making a beret, no one will notice slight deviations from perfect flatness, so don’t worry too much.

Third, notice the increases form spirals? That’s a result of the organization of the increases in each row. Although the hat calculator I’m posting tomorrow creates a pattern with a spiral top, that easily be modified to knit a square mitered hat. (But, if you’re clever, and if you visit my site and use my calculators, you probably are, you can probably figure that out yourself. )

One final choice affects the appearance of the crown; that is the increase method. I increased by knitting into the front and back of one stitch. You could work yarnovers, which would leave holes; single lifted increases would also be nice and smooth.

Even though my instructions suggest waiting until you’ve finished before removing the center waste yarn, I wanted to do it sooner. So, I threaded a tapestry needle, and ran it through the heels of the hat yarn stitches. I doubled checked to make sure I anchored all eight stitches. Then, I snipped the blue waste yarn and pulled it out.

There was a hole; I closed it by pulling on the yarn.

Voila, closed hole!

I returned to knitting and increasing; when I thought I had enough stitches to make the hat a little smaller than my head, I stopped working increases.

One of the advantages of knitting from the top down is that you can check whether or not the hat really fits. So, I decided to pause, put the stitches on a big string and lay the hat out fairly flat. Then, I measured around the perimeter. It was pretty much dead on.

But, let’s say I’d wanted my hat 20″ around. It’s not easy to measure precisely, but if the hat had been way too big around, I’d have ripped back a bit. If it’d been way too small, I’d have knit a few more increase rounds.

Once it was just right, I’d start knitting around and around without increasing until it was almost the length I like my hats. Now, it happens that I like 8″ deep hats. Some people like their hats shorter; a few like them deeper. If I’d wanted a plain hat, I would have added an inch of ribbing when the hat was about 7″ deep.

But…I looked at the hat, and I decided I wanted earflaps and a 1/2″ wide idiot cord trim. Since 8 - 1/2″ = 7.5″, I knit until the hat length hat measured 7.5″ from the little hole at the crown.

I budgeted 14 stitches to for each each ear flap, and knit short rows back and forth over these stitches. Each successive short row had 1 stitch fewer than the last one. (I’ve shown how to knit short rows so many times, I’m not going to do it again. Take my word for it, it forms a pointy earflap.)

When the flaps came to a point, I broke the yarn and knit a second flap. Then I applied idiot cord; (see my halter to learn how to do this). Applying I-cord is a truly mindless knitting task, but when I was done, the trim looked good. So, I just wove in all ends, wet the hat and let it dry on a small bowl placed on top of a can of chicken stock.

I have a perfectly nice earflap hat.

But, believe it of not, I’m not done. This hat is going to turn into something. . . very. . . weird!