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Thursday 30 January 2014

Knitting a hat in the round

I've been busy knitting hats to match the scarves I made the other day. Do you remember? Just knitting a scarf ...

Anyway, I've made a nice, baggy one for myself, and another one for my mum.

What do you think?




They fit very comfortably, and mine will be a perfect cover-up for those bad-hair mornings when I've not had time for any self-titivation. Who does when they've got the school-run to race, the packed lunch to make and the usually not-quite-awake child to breakfast and get kitted out for the day? Not me! It's as much as I can do to get where I'm supposed to be going, with everything landing in more-or-less the right place along the way.




Anyway, enough of moaning. If you've like to have a go at making your own bad-hair day cover-up, here's how to go about it:

Hat Pattern

Materials

2 balls of Sirdar Click Super chunky
1 pair of 6 mm circular needles with a 40 cm cord between them
1 pair of 9 mm circular needles with a 40 cm cord between them

Method

Cast on 88 stitches using the size 6 mm needles. I seem to have quite a big head (!), but you can vary the girth to fit comfortably by increasing or decreasing the number of stitches in increments of 4.

It's a good idea to use another length of wool to mark your place when you've finished. I loop a scrap of different coloured wool over the needle to mark the end of the row and pass it over each time so that I know when I've done a full row.


1st rib row: knit 2, purl 2 all the way round, ending with a purl 2. Take care when you knit the first stitch of this row to pull the wool tight so that you don't have a looseness where the two sides come together.
2nd and successive rib rows: same as first rib row.

Carry on knitting the rib until it's about 5 cm long - or as long as you would like it to be.

Slip your stitches from the 6 mm needles onto the 9 mm needles and carry on with the main part of the hat.

1st row: *Knit 3, slip 1*. Repeat from * to * until the last 4 stitches. Knit 2, knit 2 together. You now have 87 stitches.
2nd row: knit 1, slip 1, *knit 3, slip 1*. Repeat from * to * until last 2 stitches. Slip 1. Knit 1.
3rd row: *Knit 3, slip 1* all the way across the row, ending with Knit 3.

Repeat rows 2 and 3 until your hat is long enough to be a comfortable fit for your head.

The length you knit it to will affect the look. There's room for you to play around a little bit here. I made mine slightly longer than was strictly functional so that it would drape down behind for a relaxed baggy look. It measured 24 cm when I started to shape the crown, but you could make your hat shorter - say about 18/ 19 cm for a more conventional, snug fit.

Do whatever works best for you.  It's a great look when you try your partly-made hat on with the needles still attached at the top. Go on: admire yourself in the mirror!

Anyway, when you've got the length of your hat to where you want it to be, you need to do some crown shaping.

1st Row: Knit 2 together all the way across and end with a knit 1. [44 stitches]
2nd Row: Knit 2 together all the way across. [22 stitches]

Cut your wool so that you have a tail of about 20 cm to finish with.

Thread your wool tail into a darning needle and draw it through all the stitches, and pull together tightly into the inside of the hat. Fasten securely, finish and darn in the ends.



Ta dah! You have just made a hat, which you can now prettify with a pom pom, crochet flowers or whatever takes your fancy.

I've went for a pom pom finish on both my hats.







What do you think? Do send me a photo if you make one for yourself.



All the best for now, and enjoy that cosy ear feeling,


Bonny x

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