A Simple Hat
My first goal: make a wearable.
I was comfortable doing making knit and purl stitches, I had practiced doing stockinette in rows, and I had read my first knitting pattern, following Mary Benton’s Stuffed Rabbit. I joked with my mom that I’d have a hat ready for her by Christmas – it couldn’t be hard, just time consuming, right?
Project Info:
Yarn: Facets by Loops & Threads, storm colorway, 100% acrylic, medium weight (debatable)
Needles: US 8 circular, 16” diameter (+ US 8 DPNs, but that doesn’t come up till later)
Misc: focus, and a hope and a dream
The pattern was true to description - an easy hat that can be made from just about any yarn or needle (as long as you know what you’re doing). There was even a video!!
This was my introduction to knitting in the round. I failed spectacularly for about 3 rounds because I didn’t realize you had to join the beginning and end stitches. So I just went about knitting in rows like I had learned. Thankfully it was a 2x2 ribbing so no right side/wrong side issues but at some point I remember saying “surely this will be made into a circle eventually??” Yeah, at the beginning. But in the spirit of trial and error, I just trucked ahead and went back after finishing to sew up those first 3 rows into the round.
The second issue was not taking the supplies instructions seriously. I tried to treat knitting as I did sewing, which is fast-and-loose-cut-first-measure-second. And while knitting is actually pretty forgiving to mistakes (Mary Benton: “that is just how the pattern told me to do it”), it turns out you actually do need double pointed needles to finish a hat. So for about 2 weeks this hat had a peculiar … buttonhole … feature at the top.
The major conflict of this project was focus – until one can read stitches, one much chant to themselves “knit…knit…purl…purl” to keep the 2x2 ribbing pattern going. Also, math? One must be able to handle mental math and bookkeeping to keep their stitches and row progress straight. Which also leads me to say this: the thesis of this project was foregoing perfectionism in the name of creation. Forget which stitch you’re on a end up staggering your ribbing? No matter, the yarn will hide it. Refuse to do a gauge swatch and end up with a hat that could fit a watermelon? No matter, too big is probably preferable to too small.
End the end, I (accidentally) set a tangible goal of making a hat because it only took about 10 hours of work (which allowed me to show the finished hat, imperfections and all, to Mary Benton at the last class). But this of course just added fuel to the fire…