Hats & Hatz!

More Cranky Hats!




Using only Lion Brand Woolease, I made 5 hats to find the best fitting one.
Woolease works great, flows with ease thru the needles while cranking away.
It also stretches more so the hats (well the final one) actually fit my head.

Starting at the lower left side going clockwise is the Hat#1. I attached the brim after I took the hat off the machine. Ok, too short, brim a bit snug.

Hat #2 - I hand knit a garter stitch border and then attached it, stitch by stitch to the machine.
Too much trouble and still a bit snug.

Hat #3 - Brim width ok but could be longer - body of hat needed more length to cover my ears.

Hat #4 - Brim still not enough width but I think I got the body length just right.

Hat #5 - Center hat - TaDa! The brim depth just right so it's double thickness covers the ears and the body length long enough to hit just at the end of ears.

Here is my "Hat Recipe" for using Wool Ease yarn on the Innovations Machine.

Innovating Hats

Using LB Woolease gives a gauge of 3sts & 5 rows to 1”

Cast on with waste yarn for however many rounds you like (I knit 4)

Change to MC and knit for 40 rows,

After about 40 rows start attaching the brim.

Reach into the inside and pull up the bottom of the fabric, you need to find the corresponding st.

Pull out the stitch and place that stitch on the blue needle and adjust it downwards to meet with the stitch on there.

Crank the machine and feed the yarn to knit the two sts together.

Continue picking up sts from the brim, transferring them to the needles and manually knitting them together as you crank.

Knit 20 more rows then change to waste yarn, knit about 6 rows and take off to hand knit crown of hat.

I swatched first to find what needle size gave me the same gauge as the machine.

Crown decreases:

Rnd1: K9, K2tog around = 40 sts
Rnds 2,4,& 6 Knit
Rnd 3: K3, K2tog around = 32 sts
Rnd 5: K2, K2tog around = 24 sts
Rnd 7: K2tog around = 12 sts. Break yarn with a long tail to gather up these last sts.

Here's an inside view of the hats.





And even tho it took me about a day to crank out and hand knit the machine hat, I can still hand knit a hat in one night.!

One of our NAS group members, Mary, gave us a great link to some real easy hats.

So I made this one last night.




Basic pattern can be found here on Pat Hodd's Website.

Watch Cap Patterns

I used about 3 oz of worsted wt yarns and #6 needles.

The only thing I do not like about this pattern is the crown - I prefer a more fitted crown so my next one will be knit with the crown the way I prefer. This one was knit according to the pattern. And it really was easy!


Oh and I have not forgotten about the mittens - I'm getting ready to start another pair!