Thursday, September 15, 2011

Working on another hat: Could a free pattern be on the way?

So William needs a hat, mittens, and a scarf. He picked out the yarn from my stash, a very colorful variety of Caron Simply Soft called "Embroidery Print." It is perfect for a little kid.

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When he looked at the patterns he loved the gnome and pixie hats. So using the amazing Ravelry I found a selection of free patterns for gnome hats. I settled on "The Ironic Gnome" (don't you LOVE that name) for "hipster gnomes" from the great blog The Work is Getting to Me. One thing I REALLY love about this hat that I don't know how to do is the color gradient dye job that XandY did to her yarn. It's amazing and she is promising a tutorial. Can't wait.

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Side from The Work is Getting to Me

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back from The Work is Getting to Me

I love the slouchyness (she used Paton's Classic and any acrylic isn't going to have the same slouch) and the aforementioned gradient dye.

BUT, as all of you know, I am a designer, and I'm always making modifications to everything I knit. My first was to start with ear flaps, which I worked in the following way:

Best worked on the dpns you'll use to make the hat
Cast on 4
Row1: Perl
Row2: K1, M1, K2, M1, K1
Row3: Perl
Row4: Knit
Row5: Perl
Row6: K1, M1, K4, M1, K1
Repeat rows 3 - 5
Continue to add 2 stitches to following row until there are 14 stitches on needles
Then:
Perl 1 row
Knit 1 row
Perl 1 row
Knit 1 row
Perl 1 row
Then add 2 additional stitches, continuing in this manner until there are 20 stitches on the needle
Perl 1 row
Hold each ear flap on needle

At this point I should tell you that I think I'm using size 6 dpns (I eyeballed them, so I'm not sure: can't find my measuring tool) since I'm making this for a 4 year old and the gauge was much smaller than called for in the Ironic Gnome pattern. So I ended up using a knitted cast on with 30 stitches in the back of the hat, knitting on the ear flaps, and 50 stitches in the front of the hat for a total of 120 stitches cast on. I also did a 2x2 rib instead of the 1x1 rib called for in the pattern. I added an additional stitch every 12th stitch on the first row after the rib stitch and am now following the pattern as written.

I am thinking of making the top of the hat longer and pointier and maybe adding a pom pom, but William didn't seem to thrilled with the Jayne Cobb hat when I showed it to him (how I love the Jayne)

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source on Craftster

Maybe I'll just have to knit that one for myself!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Excellent, now I can follow your modifications for the young'uns. I'll have to figure out how to link this to ravelry.

Anonymous said...

Love your hats and so perfect now that the weather is getting colder. Hope to see more soon.
Wishing you an awesome day,
Barbara
Español para Niños (Spanish for Kids)

Paige Knowles said...

I absolutely love the hats,
they make me think of something Mrs.Weasley would knit for her kids!

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