A hat for James

I finished James' stocking cap last night.  He wanted the same one I made for Aidan but shorter.

I used this stocking cap pattern, which was VERY easy to follow and, always a bonus, free too!

A few things about this pattern:  there is a typo in it:  it should read "cast on 76 stitches" not 78.  When doing ribbing you must have a number of stitches that can be divided by 4.  Also, it says stockinette stitch after the ribbing however, I read that if you are working on circular needles you can just do regular knitting (garter stitching) in place of stockinette.  I find this much easier to keep a rhythm going, especially if I'm doing something else at the same time because I don't have to keep track of whether I am knitting or purling.


To alter the pattern for this shorter hat I followed the pattern up to round 10, figuring that if I'd started to alter it before then it probably wouldn't have fit on James' head.  This seemed to work out well.  After round 10 I did even garter stitching for 10 rounds (instead of 20) and at every point after that I did 4 rounds wherever it said to do 19 so I was decreasing with the first round each time I changed colors.

Also, this time I used the duplicate stitch join in with a slipknot instead of a regular knot then went back and worked in the tails after a few rows.  The slipknot made this so much easier and working the tails in as I went along meant that when I was done with the hat I was actually DONE without having to go back and do clean-up.  This may seem obvious to seasoned knitters but if you are new to it like me, it's not so obvious. 

There is a fabulous video for the duplicate knit join-in using slipknots at Knitting Tips about halfway down the page.

Both Aidan and James' hats were made with Red Heart worsted weight yarn.  The larger hat used about half a skein of each color.  The smaller hat used about 1/4 skein of each color. 
I used 16" size 8 circular needles and size 8 double pointed needles on this.  (You will need both, as you move the work onto the double pointed needles when it gets too small for the circular needles.)  I also used a plastic tapestry needle for the color join-in's. 

To save you from the "bigger is better" mistake I made when buying circular needles, you do need to get the smallest length you can for your project.  For instance, this project says to use 16" circular needles.  I couldn't find them the first time I went shopping and bought 24" (I think...) needles.  Silly me, you cannot knit something on a circular needle that has a bigger diameter than what you are making.   (Unless you use a technique called magic loop knitting.  I did try this technique and almost tore my hair out in frustration.  I do not recommend trying it as a beginner but I hear that some people actually prefer it so...to each her own, I guess.)


All of the materials for this hat probably cost a total of around $10 using Joanns or Michael's coupons that come in their weekly ads or emails for the needles.  I encourage anyone who wishes they could knit to just jump in and do it.  After all, if you mess up you can always just pull it out and try again!