I love knitting hats. When I taught myself to knit in 2011, the reason I started was so I could make myself a pretty knitted hat. It took me almost a year to get to the point where I was ready to knit a hat. Knitting in the round is interesting, some folks do it with double pointed needles ("dpns") and some folks do it with circular needles. I found that I can't handle dpns very well, so I taught myself how to use circular needles, with lots of help from the internet. The trick to circular needles to have the right size for your project.
I was going through my yarn stash the other day and I found this skein that I love. The yarn is Lion Brand Wool-Ease, which is a blend of lamb's wool and acrylic. It is machine washable and dryable. The color is white/multi. It's bright white with tiny glittery bits in it to make it sparkle. You can't see the sparklies in this picture very well. Sorry. I only have the one skein of this yarn, perfect for a hat.
Here is the start of my hat. And yes, I do need that many stitch markers (100 stitches, a stitch marker every 10 stitches), the orange stitch marker represents the end of the round. This is a simple 3 knit, 2 purl rib pattern and I can always tell exactly where I am by where the stitch marker is.
I'm using my size 8 16" fixed circular knitting needles (Rainbow wood (f/k/a Harmony) needles from Knitpicks.com) to knit the body of the hat. The pattern says to knit the body of the hat to 5.5", but I always make mine longer. I like to have my ears covered with a hat. When I get to the the crown decreases, I will split the stitches up evenly between two circular needles and finish the last 10 rows.
I'm knitting my favorite hat pattern (I've made about 30 of these since I started knitting). It's really simple to knit and the finish is super cute. The pattern is called "Hat Fit For A Boyfriend" (it's a great hat for girls, too). This is a free pattern on Ravelry. Here is a link to the pattern on the designer, Stephanie Nicole's, website. There are no pictures on this old website page, but the entire written pattern is there. Here's a picture of one that I made. I especially love the decreases at the top of the hat and the way they work. So clever.
That's all for now. I'm disappearing for the Christmas holiday. I'll be back next year.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!
