Knitting Rules! (23 page)

Variation 2

Ribbed Edge
: To work the hat with a ribbed band at the edge, first choose your ribbing style. Knit one, purl one? Make your cast-on divisible by 2. Knit three, purl one? Fudge your number so that it's divisible by 4. Your total cast-on number must be divisible by the repeat in your ribbing. Knit the ribbing so it covers the height of an ear and then carry on with the standard instructions, or knit it for double an ear's length and fold it double when you're done (for extra warmth). If you're really nervous about sizing, this can be a lifesaver: knit in ribbing all the way to the top and congratulate yourself on knitting an authentic seaman's cap.

Plain knitting can bore you silly. I wish I had something witty to say about that, but I don't. Rent a movie, listen to a book on tape, or, if the twitch over your eye gets too distracting, try one of the following solutions for jazzing up a hat.

Boring Hat Solution 1

Stripes

You'd be surprised how far stripes will go toward personalizing a hat. How about school colors, or 10 colors, or 20?
Considering how much pizzazz you can get from just picking up a different yarn every couple of rows — it's a lot of bang for your buck. It's also a wicked way to use up those little tiny bits of yarn that you've been saving. I bet you wonder why you had them.

If you're knitting a hat flat, you aren't going to have a problem matching up the stripes. Let each end hang when you change colors and use that bit to sew up that color. Weave in your ends and sew the back seam at the same time. (I won't tell you how long into my knitting life it took me to come up with that concept.)

If, however, you're knitting a hat in the round, there's going to be a teeny-weeny problem to deal with. Because knitting in the round is essentially knitting a spiral, when you change colors there's a little “step up” at the point where you change.

There are three ways that I know of to cope with this.

Two words: Don't care. Quickly develop a way to find it charming. There is absolutely nothing wrong with ignoring the “jog” that results from stripes knit in the round, especially if you move the spot where it jogs to a different spot each time. I wouldn't wear it to a knitting-guild meeting, where lots of people would feel compelled to tell me ways to avoid it, but if you really don't care, or if you actually do find it charming, then it's fine.

Change colors and knit the first round with your new color. When you come back to the first stitch of the new color (the first stitch of the round), pick up the stitch below it (this will be your old color), put it on the left needle in front of the first stitch of the next round, knit them together, then carry on normally. If you're not changing colors, don't do anything and knit merrily around. This technique (if you can remember to do it … I have some problems) hides the jog quite well.

You can sort of “sew away” the jog by taking the loose ends of the yarn and weaving them in afterward in the direction opposite the jog. If it's the end of the yarn on the bottom of the jog, weave it in across the jog and
up
, and if it's the loose end at the top of the jog, weave in the end across and
down
. This method doesn't hide the jog as well, but if you're feeling like a slacker, it works nicely enough. What the heck? You have to do something with the ends anyway.

Boring Hat Solution 2

Fancy Stitches

Once you've done the ribbing on a hat, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from tossing into it anything that strikes your fancy. Every pattern has a repeat whether it's Fair Isle, intarsia, or lace, and I try to choose something that's going to fit into the number of stitches I have. If I have 100 stitches, I look for something that's going to divide into that, a repeat of 2, 4, 5, 10, or 20.

If you have 100 stitches and you choose a repeating pattern that adds up to 95 or 103, take heart. You can increase or decrease the required number in the last row of ribbing. Changes that make the circumference of a hat
go up or down by an inch or less will not matter, provided you have worked at least an ear size (2 inches) of ribbing first. If this rule gives you hives, always opt to make the hat bigger rather than smaller.

Boring Hat Solution 3

Pom-poms

There are knitters who frown on pom-poms. I'm one of them, and I'll freely tell you that I think much of my opposition to an enormous hairy wad of wool stuck to the top of a hat stems from the long Canadian winter when I was nine. I was, at nine years old, developing a sense of fashion. (Those who know me now will laugh at this, believing, and rightly so, that I never did develop one, but this is not the time to discuss my position on culottes.) At this time in my life I coveted, more than any other thing, a chic pink suede hat with rabbits on it that had a white satin ribbon that tied fetchingly under the chin.

My mum is a practical woman, and instead of the pink rabbit hat gracing my head (and changing my life, for the right hat can mean much for the social standing of a nine-year-old girl), I had, for that entire winter: a gray and red hand-knit hat topped with a red pom-pom on top. The pom-pom was not only red and not a rabbit (that was really its biggest crime), but it was also almost as big as my head. Since we're talking about a Canadian winter, I had to wear it, but I whipped it off and tried to hide it every time one of the pink rabbit ribbon hat girls looked my way. The pom-pom was so big that I couldn't even jam it in my pocket. The hat would go in, but the enormous pom-pom defied hiding and waggled outside of my coat. The shame and the horror have stayed with me.

That said, pom-poms do have advantages and it's not fair to let the hat hardships of my youth keep me from telling you about them.

Boring Hat Solution 4

Notions

The sewing store has a whole wall of what are called notions. Notions are pretty much anything in a fabric shop that isn't fabric, and knitters should take a long look at them. A boring hat can be improved by any number of things on that wall. You can sew on an appliqué, adorn a brim with ribbon, sew on a bow, or attach a seriously cool series of big buttons. It's a brilliant, quick solution to a lame hat, but don't forget the safety rules. If the hat is for a baby (or anyone else who might try to eat it), sew things on very securely with sewing thread, not yarn, so they aren't a choking hazard. There is no such thing as overdoing it when it comes to sewing on buttons.

This hat is really the wrong size.
You know what? I'm not going to lecture you on the evils of not swatching. I'm sure you swatched, and more than that, I'm confident that you swatched really well, and that you washed the swatch before you knit this disaster. I bet this is one of those times when the swatch lied. If the hat is well and truly too big, you have a couple of choices. Lots, actually. You can:

•
Look for a friend with a bigger head
. This is an excellent strategy for almost anything that doesn't fit. Embrace the possibility that this knitted item has a destiny that's a surprise to you. Consider the chance that even though you thought you were knitting a hat for your 10-year-old
nephew, it might actually have turned out to be a hat for your great-uncle Vinny the ex-linebacker.

•
Is your hat made of plain good wool?
Could you felt it smaller? Try giving it a swish in some hot water and see what happens. Could be that you're headed for a fuzzier, but smaller, hat.

•
If you're feeling brave and bold, and have access to a sewing machine, try the “sew-and-cut” solution
. Using a sewing machine, simply sew a line down the inside of the hat. It's like “taking in” a pair of pants. After you've sewn the line, try on the hat. Small enough? If so, run another line of stitches (as insurance), then cut away the excess knitting. It's not something for the faint of heart, but it does make a smaller hat.