Hats for Little Heads

I mentioned about a month ago that I started a hat for my "take along" knitting.

I did indeed take it with me wherever I went. I didn't always work on it, though.

One time I pulled it out and realized I had decreased enough stitches that I had to switch to using double-pointed needles. I didn't have them with me.

The next time Troy was driving, I pulled it out again...and the same thing happened. I still didn't have the dpns with me!

But eventually, it all came together and I had a finished hat.

But as soon as I had that finished hat, I knew I had to fix it. You may recall that I had cast on with a provisional cast on and started with a (version of?) Turkish cast on. Or maybe I didn't tell you that? Anyway that's what I did because I didn't want a tough non-stretchy edge. But it was too loose. It's pretty easy for it to be loose. At least in my experience.

But it's all one continuous piece of string, so you can pull on it and adjust the tension and that's what I did. I hope you can see in the picture below that on the left side of the bottom edge, the stitches are smaller, do not spread out as much, and are more even.

I'm at the same point in the process in the next picture, but I wanted to let you see how  much yarn I had pulled out already. At this point I had made it half way around the hat, and that was how much extra length there was in the cast on.

The brim edge is still stretchy, but not nearly so sloppy.

Here is a shot of the swirling decreases:

The hat is a little small for my head. (Not surprising since I made the child's size.)

I would say the colour is the most
accurate in this picture.

Project Stats
Started: 19 Feb '16 / Finished: 10 Mar '16
Pattern: Barley by tincanknits (size: Child = 19")
Materials: 65 grams vintage Brown Sheep Co. (85/15 wool/mohair), colour 160


But wait! There's more!

When I finished this hat, I had 56 grams of wool left, so I thought I could make another hat. I would just go down a size and should have enough yarn.

But since I wasn't sure how far the yarn would go, I started at the top and knit the hat from the top down, reversing the pattern directions.

I picked the wrong increase to use. My favourite is to knit into the stitch in the row below. But if you do that every row (like you need to in the beginning of this pattern), then you are always knitting into the very same stitch every time you do that. So all of the beginning increases come out of the same stitch on the second row. That is why it is all "bunchy" at the top of the hat...except in the garter section. That is smooth because I used a kfb (knit into the front and back of the stitch) for that increase, and that has no unintended consequences when you do it every row.

I decided it was ok to leave it and just made the hat a little longer than I would have otherwise. Maybe I should have gone a little longer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

When it was time to add the brim, I decided not to do ribbing all the way around again. I did ribbing under the garter section and did garter under the stockingnette section. Nice little turn-about there, right?

Since garter has a shorter row gauge (it takes more rows to make up the same length compared to the ribbing), I added two extra rows at the end on just the garter stitches. (I just turned the work as if I was doing short rows, which basically is what I was doing.)

Then I bound off with Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off. (Although we're not so surprised anymore, are we?)

Now I have 13 grams of yarn left. I won't be starting another hat, but maybe it will be part of a hat one day when I have yarn that will work well with it.
Project Stats
Started: 13 Mar '16 / Finished: 18 Mar '16
Pattern: Barley by tincanknits (size: Toddler = 17")
Materials: 42 grams vintage Brown Sheep Co. (85/15 wool/mohair), colour 160


Both hats will go into the pile to be mailed to Wool-Aid.