A Hat Big Enough

My husband is someone whose head size is larger than the average. He has a hard time finding hats to fit. He recently, came down stairs so proudly saying, “I just found a web-site where I can order an extra large hat.” After hearing that, I was humbled into finally beginning a knit hat that would fit his head.

Just before Christmas I downloaded Brooklyntweed’s “Turn A Square” free hat pattern. Thank you, Jared! I thought this would be a fun hat to knit and would be manly enough for my hubbie to wear. I spoke with my friend Ellen who makes recycled cashmere yarn. She had just dropped some nice gray colored yarn for sale at one of our local yarn stores. I dashed over to “Ewe’ll Love It!” and made my purchase. I proceeded to visit several other stores in search of accompanying contrasting stripe colors.

For such a simple looking hat there were some technical challenges to completing a good looking result. This hat is knit in the round on circular needles where stripes appear with steps at the color changes. To avoid these stepped stripes, I used the jogless stripe knit technique found here on the techknitting blogspot: techknitting blogspot. I wish I understood there was such a simple solution sooner. I could have used this technique earlier in my two-stranded knitting.

I didn’t finish this in time for a Christmas gift but started right afterwards. This way I got a chance to use part of my new gift of Knitpick's Interchangeable Harmony Wood Circular Needles. Instead of using double pointed needles at the close of the hat top, I used two circular needles (see photo). To make the stitches slide easily from the left side needle to the right I used one needle size smaller on the left needle connection.

I did run into some problems with this knit design. I didn’t see other commenting on this on Ravelry, so, it could just be the way I knit. I found I was creating a rather large gap where the “corner” raglan style decrease was occurring in my knitting (see photo). As I noticed the effect starting a few rows up I tried to minimize the gap. I found it helped to knit tightly in the area one row prior to the decrease area. It helped but, I still came back and ran a few tightening stitches through the loops on the backside of the knitted fabric at the raglan decrease line (see photo).

Morning Glories!

Our knitting guild the Nashoba Valley Knitting Guild had its’ hat contest last night and my Morning Glories hat won one of the prizes, the one for most beautiful. Yahoo!!! Here is my daughter modeling it. Excuse me if I say that I’m rather proud since I’ve never won anything before, not even a free scratch ticket. Our Guild even offered the winners prizes. How Cool ! I got a cute measuring tape, a fun knitting bag, a craft necklace, and a gift certificate to, The World of Stitches, a local crafts shop.

I was rather worried since after washing and drying it was not very shapely. I hadn’t knit with multi-stranded colors in awhile. I was rather rusty in the beginning. I was forcing the stranding at the back to be looser than I should have so the bottom was more floppy than I would have like. I was actually going to rip it out and my daughter convinced me to keep it. So I pressed it and wet it and dyed it with a cord and towel. Then it was much better. . .

I bought the yarn on sale in September at Jo-Ann Fabrics. When I bought the yarn I was thinking I might use it for making a hat for the contest. I had been on the prowl for something to use and at $1.97 who could resist. I got one of each color. I bought the yarn thinking of stripes or something colorful. When I took the library hat book home I was immediately inspired by the Morning Glories pattern. Now the saga begins . . .

I had the most of the colors that I needed for the pattern except green. So, coming from a crafty family, I chose to dye the white yarn green. (My mother is a rug hooker extraordinaire and dyes a lot.) Alas, I had only one white that I ball that I needed for the background! Back to Jo-Ann’s for more, what no more! . . . I had to go up to Tewksbury for more. I got it and dyed it!

So in my usual distracted fashion. I finished the hat and got around to the flowers but didn’t sew them together. Yup, Thanksgiving came and went, then Christmas. In between I cleaned up the house for company. The end of January is coming up and “Uh, Oh” I better finish the hat for the contest. After much searching I found the hat part with a bag of unfinished projects but no flowers. I spent one Saturday searching through several boxes of yarn. I finally turned the boxes over and found the flowers hiding in the bottom. Well the pieces are together and I’m happy with the results. All the members who knitted hats did a great job. Take a look at the tableful of hat contest entries. I sure hope all the lucky people at Seven Hills will enjoy them!

Project Details: Morning Glories hat found in the book
Knit Hats! by Gwen Steege

It’s one of the books our Guild has in its collection of lending books.

Yarn: Bellezza Collection Stellina
white, blue, orange, pink, lavender, green (home-dyed)

Needles: 6 US double pointed

Thoughts/Modifications: It was fun. I giggled as I made the flowers. I didn’t totally follow the flower directions though. Since the directions were well written I’m sure the directions would have made fine flowers except it called for knitting them flat. I already knit the hat in the round so why bother with stitching up a seam when I can just knit them in the round.