Last week I was at Joann's looking for circular needles to knit hats for boyfriend and his friends for Dag anyway, and so I popped over to the Red Heart Team Spirit self-striping yarn. Then I realized that I don't know what teams he likes, so I texted my sister and asked her. I was a little appalled to learn that he likes the Packers and the Cubs, but I grabbed some green and yellow yarn and some Clover Takumi US 9 16 in. circular needles and was on my way. I was a little annoyed with Joann's when I got to the knitting needles section and found they only had two brands of knitting needles and a rather poor selection within those. I wanted some metal needles because that's what I'm used to and they're cheaper than bamboo. Unfortunately, they only had 29 in. and up lengths in the metal needles. I wanted (I was guessing) a 16 in. needle because I wanted to be able to knit hats on it without any fuss. I found what I was looking for in the bamboo needles, and they were on sale, so I guess it was okay.
Next was for me to ask my sister if her boyfriend would wear a hat or if I would have to make him something else. She reported that he would, but he wanted it to be a sports team hat (check) with a pom pom on it (doable).
Yesterday I actually sat down and started his hat. At first I wasn't sure what kind of hat I wanted to make, and then I really looked at the hat pattern on the yarn, and decided that was the way to go. The pattern said to cast on 90 stitches on US 7 needles, and since I had US 9, I decided to cut it down to 80 stitches. I did check my gauge, but for whatever reason, each test swatch I did came out claiming I had the same gauge as the US 7 needles. I mean, I knit pretty tight, but not that tight. So 80 it was. However, I misread the directions some a little. It said to start the hat on straight needles-no big, I would just start on my new circular needles-and then purl one wrong sided row before switching to double pointed needles. This instruction for whatever reason didn't make sense to me at the time, and I got it into my head that what that meant was for the first row to be purled so the hat wouldn't roll because of the stockinette stitch. I later realized how incorrect I had been, but by then it was too far to go back, and it doesn't seem to make that much of a difference.
Yesterday afternoon I sat and knitted the first 5 inches of the hat, and then did the first couple decreasing rounds. While I was knitting those first couple rounds, I realized that I wasn't going to be able to finish the hat the way it was, but I don't have double pointed needles large enough to swap out, so I thought I'd learn the magic loop. I knew it was meant to be done on much (much much) longer needles than 16 in., but it was kind of late, and I couldn't think how I could get it onto my longer circular needles. So I pushed right on through and finished the hat using the magic loop on 16 in. needles. It was a pain, and then next time I make a hat on these needles, I am going to do something else, but I managed it, and the hat looks pretty good if i do say so myself.
Last night I also knitted the ear flaps onto the hat. I wasn't sure how it was going to work out, but I was really glad I used the thumb cast-on (the first thing she shows in the video-I know she says there are problems with it, but it's the way my grandma taught me to cast-on, and I really like it for hats and things that need a lot of stretch) because those stitches were so easy to see and pick up. They were so easy, and they looks so cute.
So after that, I was finished with the hat for the night.
Not because I actually hat finished it, but because I didn't feel like making the pom pom, and I don't have a big enough crochet needle to do the edging the pattern calls for. I've never done edging on a hat before, so I was on the fence about doing it at all, but I'm hoping it will make the hat stop rolling, so I'm going to set this hat aside until I can pick up the right size crochet needle. Okay, I might make the pom pom, and I did cut the lengths of yarn to make the braids which I can't attach until the edging it done.
Happy knitting!
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