{"id":7811,"date":"2013-02-11T09:58:20","date_gmt":"2013-02-11T14:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/?p=7811"},"modified":"2013-02-11T09:58:20","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T14:58:20","slug":"knitted-lace-hat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/knitted-lace-hat\/","title":{"rendered":"knitted lace hat"},"content":{"rendered":"

I actually wrote this post long before Christmas, but it’s been too hot to even consider modelling a warm hat until now, so let’s pretend I just finished it – I want to tell you the lemons-into-lemonade<\/em> story of how I ended up with this lacy knitted hat instead of the cardigan or sweater I’d intended to make…<\/p>\n

\"knitted<\/p>\n

After the success of my first knitted cardigan<\/a>, I needed to get another project started asap so I didn’t revert back to my exhausting pattern of working (crochet designing) while watching TV in the evenings.<\/p>\n

I looked through my stash and found this interesting yarn – it looks like mohair but it’s actually an acrylic\/nylon blend… No, it’s not the loveliest yarn ever, but my Mum found it in a charity shop for next to nothing, and I thought I could use it up on some knitting practice before committing to the expense of buying yarn for a sweater. (As there are no big box craft stores here, no weekly sales, no 40% off coupons, I can’t get any bargain yarn any more, so working through my stash is suddenly more appealing to me!)<\/p>\n

\"knitted<\/p>\n

I wanted to try a built-in edge to prevent the stockinette curling this time, so I learnt how to start with a built-in facing and cast-on for the back of my unplanned sweater\/cardigan:<\/p>\n

\"knitted
\nBuilt-in facing (look how neat it makes the bottom edge look)<\/em><\/p>\n

Feeling ambitious, I thought I’d find out how to make knitted lace (i.e. strategically placed holes), and invented a basic pattern to work with:<\/p>\n

\"knitted
\nMy very basic lace pattern<\/em><\/p>\n

Disaster 1:<\/strong> After working through my 12-row lace pattern repeat three times (while watching TV and paying very little attention to what I was doing) I held my knitting up and noticed a couple of big mistakes in the position of my lace holes – one in the wrong place and one extra hole that shouldn’t have been there.<\/p>\n

Solution 1:<\/strong> Here’s a big advantage of knitting over crochet: if you made a mistake, even many rows back, you can unravel that column of stitches down to the mistake like a ladder in a stocking, fix the mistake, and then zip all the stitches back up again with a crochet hook by hooking each through the last. Mine was a little trickier than fixing a mistake in stockinette, as I had to unravel some lace pattern stitches – decreases and yarn overs – but it worked! Which means that now I can confidently knit without paying much attention to it, knowing that I can fix a mistake later.<\/p>\n

Disaster 2:<\/strong> I realised that a) I really<\/em> don’t love this yarn enough to wear a sweater made from it, and b) knitting lace without making mistakes would take more concentration than I can afford to spend – the whole joy of my knitting is that I can do it mindlessly to stop myself from working on crochet designs out-of-hours, and that doesn’t really apply when getting into more complex stitches and patterns. What’s the point in completing an un-relaxing project to make an un-wearable sweater?<\/p>\n

Solution 2:<\/strong> By luck, the bottom hem of my ‘sweater back’ was just the right length to be a hat band. (That’s only because my gauge was a bit off to begin with, and my planned 18″ back was actually 20″ wide – another reason not to continue with this project as a sweater.) So I stopped working my lace pattern and figured out a decrease pattern to make the top of a hat shape instead. I found out that I can extrapolate my crochet shaping knowledge to make knitted shaping pretty easily. <\/p>\n

\"knitted
\nDecreases create the top of the hat<\/em><\/p>\n

I seamed the two side edges together, and, voilà, a hat is born:<\/p>\n

\"knitted
\nI knitted a hat – by accident!<\/em><\/p>\n

And the bonus surprise from all this: I actually like the hat! I think I could get away with a small accessory in this yarn and colourway, whereas I know for a fact I would never<\/em> have worn it as a sweater. I’ve never designed a hat before as I’m not really a hat person, but this has actually made me consider designing a crochet hat pattern at some point…<\/p>\n

\"knitted<\/p>\n

I’m avoiding getting fancy with my next knitting project (a sweater). I really like the look of stockinette, and the miles of pulling one loop through another to form a neat even fabric is very soothing to me. Yes, this fabric could be made in minutes on a knitting machine, but there’s still an advantage in making over buying: I can tailor my garments to fit me instead of having to settle for leaving the bottom of every cardigan unbuttoned to accommodate my hips.<\/p>\n

Plus, it’s just relaxing to design things without writing anything down or worrying about how it’ll translate into a pattern. Yay for non-work crafting!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I actually wrote this post long before Christmas, but it’s been too hot to even consider modelling a warm hat until now, so let’s pretend I just finished it – I want to tell you the lemons-into-lemonade story of how I ended up with this lacy knitted hat instead of the cardigan or sweater I’d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-knitting"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}