Wednesday 29th November - Advent 1 - The 5-day Beanie Hat

I'm trying to post the first week's craft ideas ahead of the start of Advent so that you have a chance to think about them...

Here's the first of the projects for the Advent Craft Adventure Book - A very simple Beanie Hat. I've called it a '5-day beanie hat' because I reckon it would be doable in the time - I did it three and a half days and now I need to take a day off from knitting!

In summary; for a smallish(ish) adult beanie, head circumference about 21-22 inches, you will need

178 yards chunky (bulky) yarn, NOT 'Super Bulky'

6mm or 6.5 mm needles

aim for a gauge of 14 1/2 stitches and 26 rows to 4". It's not crucial to be exactly exact.

Cast on 40 stitches, and knit 108 rows. (Each ridge in your knitting = 2 rows)

Stitch markers to count the rows are very useful.

Your finished piece of knitting will be 11" along the cast on/off edge, and 16" around the long edge. Garter stitch is very stretchy, so the 16" should fit comfortably around the head.

You can do an ordinary bind off, and then sew the two short sides together, or consult google and video tutorials and do a 3-needle bind off which is what I did, which combines binding off and joining two edges in one go.

Now you have a tube!

At the open end with the longest tail of yarn, thread a needle and go around the top picking up every other ridge like this; 

and gently draw it tight like this

fasten off and weave in all the ends. A hat! You can add a pompom, home-made or bought fake-fur if you like.

I think that knitting 108 rows at the rate of around 24 per day wouldn't take too long each day; it's helpful if the yarn moves more easily across the needles than mine did. It all depends on the needles and the yarn. My hat is actually a size bigger, because I used 6.5mm needles. I think you would be better off doing some sums or wading through the website (see below) if you wanted to make a smaller size or use different yarn.     

The youtube tutorial for the hat is here

 The website, www.yayforyarn.com has the pattern for this hat in every size from premature baby to large adult, and every yarn weight  from sock yarn to super chunky. The website instructions are maddening as it is full of advertisements; I suspect this is to encourage you to buy the ad-free pattern! 

I have summarised this information, including the name of the website, on the card which I photographed tucked into the brim of the hat.