Knitting - help and advice super thread!

krankykitty wrote: »

I like this baby hat pattern Baby Hat Pattern but I'd like to use some DK wool that I already have.

Does anyone have any idea how to scale the stiches down to work with the wool and needles that I have? (Would normally use 4 or 4.5mm needles with that wool.

Thanks

Hi Kitty

The first thing you need to do is to knit a sample swatch with your yarn and needles in garter stitch (or whatever stitch you want to do the main body of the work). Make sure that you cast on enough stitches so as you can leave two stitches either side of your measurement ie you should cast on roughly 10cm of stitches plus 4. Knit for twelve rows or so then measure from the middle of the work how many stitches you knit over 10cm. You can extrapolate from this how many stitches you will need for the brim of the hat.

According to my calculations these are the brim measurements for the different sizes: (no of sts in the brim after the fancy edging divided by no of sts in 10cm)x10 you will need 27cm for 0-3months (81/30)x10; 30 1/3cm for 3-6months; or 33 2/3cm for 6-9months.

To figure out how many stitches your brim needs to be, multiply the number of sts you knit over 10cm by the number of stitches you need for the brim and divide your answer by 10. For example if you knit 15sts over 10cm and you want to knit the 0-3months size your calculation would be (15x27)/10=40.5

Most likely you will have an uneven number. What you need to do is to adjust this to make it fit in with your pattern. For the case of simplicity I would ignore the instructions in Row 7 of the edging- they're put in so that when you go to do the shaping you don't have to decrease on the cast on edge. I don't have a problem with this but if it bothers you feel free to add in a stitch- IMO they don't seem to make a whole lot of difference to the shaping of the pattern in stitches this small and will have more bearing on the shape of the garment when it is rendered in larger stitches and yarn. So if we go back to the numbers arrived at in row 3 we can see that they are multiples of four, which fits nicely in with the pattern. So get your brim stitches calculated above to fit in with multiples of four- in the above example its nice and easy- you're looking at getting to 40sts. For a pattern like this I would tend to round down only if the answer I got above was one over a multiple of four, for two or three I would round up, ie if your number above was anywhere between 40 and 41.9 round down to 40, if its anywhere between 42 and 43.9 round up to 44.

Now if you look at the cast on edge of the lace edging the pattern is in multiples of five, plus two. So what you need to do is divide your adjusted brim stitches by 4 and multiply by 5, then add 2, eg [(40/4)x5]+2 which would give you a cast on of 52sts.

So knit the lace edging as instructed but in row 7 instead of increasing or decreasing just knit. Then continue in garter stitch until you achieve the length specified in the pattern.

When it comes to shaping the top, the pattern is asking you to decrease eight sts evenly across every fourth row four times; then every second row over three times, then every row twice, before drawing the yarn through a small number of stitches to close the crown. I find it helpful to visualise this in working out how to get the proportions right. It is worth remembering that an even decrease of 8sts every second row will produce a flat disc.

So what you need to do is take the number of stitches you have been doing in garter stitch (the number of brim stitches, in the example 40sts) and divide by 8. This gives you 5. But if you were to decrease by eight five times you would end up with one stitch on your needle which when you sewed up your garment would give it a pointed top. You want a nice flat top so in this case you would stop when you had eight stitches on the needle and draw the remaining yarn through these. If your brim stitches were a multiple of four that does not divide evenly by eight what I would do is decrease four rather than eight in the last decrease row.

So in our example, we're looking at four decrease rows altogether to shape the top of the hat, as opposed to nine in the original pattern. Since you're using bigger yarn and stitches I would lose the decrease rows one after the other, it can give a warped effect to the finished product that is less noticeable in finer work. Here I would decrease every fourth row twice, then every second row twice. In the example it would look like this

(k2tog, k3) to end (32sts); k 3rows; (k2tog, k2) to end (24sts); k 1row; (k2tog, k1) to end (16sts); k 1row; (k2tog) to end (8sts). Break yarn leaving a long tail, draw through remaining 8sts, pull tight and sew together with right sides together.

Phew! Hope it works out for you!

The_Morrigan wrote: »

OK I'm cracking up...finished one side of the blanket and the end is way looser/stretched than the top I've just finished. Any ideas how I could fix this?

Could cast off using a larger needle to get a looser edge if the problem is just the cast off edge, or you could try to fix the problem with wet blocking if its more of a gradual tightening of the sts.

The_Morrigan wrote: »

I've already cast off and was folding it to put it away noticed a massive difference in the edges from the start to the end..there is no problem on the sides so the cast on stiches are just a lot looser

Unpick the cast off edge and cast off again using a larger gauge needle than the one you have been using for the body of the work. This will take a bit more yarn so you might have to add in some more to finish the cast off. If this looks a bit messy and bothers you you can go around all the edges in crochet- dc for a simple neat look or something fancier if you prefer. I like picot edges on baby blankets myself but its a personal preference