Watch Caps

Some more hats. You are going to be sick of them after a couple more months of 'more hats'. But I assume you are tuned into this blog to see what goes on behind the scenes of Cabin Fever and this is it - months and months of hats.

Here are the watch caps with a 2/2 rib done in fingering sock wool on the right and aran weight (heavy worsted) on the left. Very different yarn weights which produce the same hat. They feel different on and they took a hugely different amount of time to knit. As you might imagine, the brown sock wool hat took just into a second 50gm ball so that's longer than one sock's worth of knitting, and the heavy worsted hat took one evening - yay! But the brown sock wool hat feels great and will be warmer. The red aran weight hat is lighter but not as dense, but fast to knit. Pros and cons, the choice will be up to you because you get to decide which weight to knit each of the hats in.

That's the whole premise of this booklet - that every pattern can be knit in any weight of yarn from sock yarn knit at 32 sts = 4"/10cm up to chunky weight yarn knit to 14 sts = 4"/10cm. Sizes will range from Newborn up to Large Adult. Lots and lots of possibility here.

A close up and personal look at the same hat in two different gauges. This idea has made writing the patterns very interesting. Usually when writing a pattern for this type of hat I would divide the crown into 4 sections and use one of the K2 ribs in the centre of each section to work the decreases. But ... when I tried dividing some of the cast on numbers of stitches for some of the yarn weights and sizes, the decrease line ended up in the centre of a P2 rib. Not too interesting as a decrease line.
So I have written the pattern with 4 distinct rounds of decrease. You can see the circles there (the hats haven't been blocked yet and some of it should disappear). This worked for every yarn weight and every size. I am going to knit a child's size hat now for confirmation.

Stay Tuned for more hats tomorrow, or skip to next month. I'll still be knitting hats.

-Deb