Posts Tagged ‘turn a square’
Post hoc hat lining
I finished the lining for the Noro Striped Hat. It felt like I knit eons on that liner, endless rows of stockinette on size 2 needles, but I got there eventually!
The lining and the hat are exactly the same size — that’s one good thing about knitting the lining directly from the hat — and I’m told it’s much better at keeping the wind out and looks extremely professional.
Lesson learned from this project: if you’re adding a lining to a hat after the fact, and said hat has been worn for a few months, you might want to wash the hat before knitting on the lining. Once the lining is in place, you’re probably going to want to steam block the whole thing to smooth out the decreases, and it turns out that hot steam really activates any odors that may have accumulated in the garment from normal wear. Just a suggestion, folks.
Noro Striped Hat
This hat is a variation on Jared Flood’s Turn a Square (Ravelry link), except instead of alternating the Noro with a solid and doing a 3×2 pattern, I followed the same 2×2 with 2 colorful yarns. It was made for a friend to go along with the Noro striped scarf. Both were given to the recipient early this winter and have been worn with pride.
You may notice a slight color differential between the two garments. That’s because the second scarf was actually a replacement for the first. The “neutral” yarn in the hat and first scarf was a colorway of tans and browns and muted greens and blues, but when I went to Loopy Yarns to pick up the replacement yarn, they were out. I ended up using a neutral of tans and browns and creams. The pictures don’t show it, but the two items really do still look good together.
It seems that this winter has been colder than usual in Chicago, and although I took care to make the hat long enough to cover one’s ears and knit a dense fabric, I’ve been told that the hat lets the bitter cold wind in. I’m not one to let a potential knitting challenge go unrecognized, and my knitterly pride is hurt by seeing other inferior hats get worn.
I’m using Misti Alpaca Worsted for the liner, which should be super soft and warm and toasty. I’m knitting the liner on size 2 needles, which should make for a nice dense fabric that isn’t too thick.
In order to attach the liner, I picked up the first row of stitches on the inside of the hat, not including where I originally bound off. This a ridge from the bind off row on the “right” side of the hat, forcing the liner to stay flat against the inside, without causing folding.
After blocking the original hat, I got 4 stitches/inch. When I swatched for the liner, I was getting 7 stitches/inch. In order to prevent puckering, on my first round I [kfb, kfb, kfb, k1], repeating until the end of the round. Now all I have to do is knit for another 6 inches, and then calculate what I need to do for the crown decreases, which should be straightforward.
Unfortunately, while it took me less than a day to crank out the hat the first time around, it’s going to take me quite a bit longer to knit the liner. There’ll be about twice as many stitches in the liner than there are in the exterior hat, and without the fun of the color transitions my attention may falter. It’s a good thing for knitterly pride, because otherwise this hat might sit until next winter!
