How to Design a Knit Hat

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Jan, with help of my friend here, I'm going to give you some ideas on how to design a knitted hat. The first thing you need to figure out is how big around is your head or your friend's head is. So you take your tape measure, measure it around her head. This happens to be about twenty two inches around. So if you have yarn that's five stitches to the inch; five times twenty two, then they only cast be on a hundred and ten stitches. Working whatever stitch you want, if you just do a stockinette stitch, it's going to have a cute little rolled brim at the bottom. If you want to do a knit one curl one or knit two curl two ribbon you can do that and then change to stockinette stitch. You can work it in the round if you want or you can work back and forth on straight or circular needles. Once you get the brim as tall as you want it to be; oh maybe about to five inches in this case; you're going to start your decreases at the top. The best way is to make sure that the number of stitches you have is divisible by ten. If we cast on a hundred and ten stitches that makes it pretty easy. What you're going to do is start your decreasing by knitting eight, then knitting two together; knitting eight, knitting two together and repeating that all the way across. The next row or round is done without any knit increases or decreases. So if you're doing it flat, then you just curl that back; if you're doing it in the round, you just knit one round. The next decreased row, you'd knit seven, knit two together; knit seven, knit two together and then curl or work even on the way back. You keep doing that, decreasing it as you go up until you get eight or ten stitches left, pull your thread through those stitches, tie it tight and you're all done. And that's how you design a knitted hat. I'm Jan at the Yarn Company in Palm Desert, California."