Decreasing a beanie with 85 sts

#1

I’ve only ever made 2 beanies before, and both had 80 sts. I’ve started another one (without a pattern, of course…silly me) with 85 sts, and have knit my way up. It’s now time to decrease, and suddenly I realized I have no idea how. If you have 85 stiches…what possibilities are there for decreasing? The math just doesn’t seem to work out, no matter what I think of.

I was basing my 85 sts off of schmeebot’s blog. She says that 85 sts, (for her at least), is a good amount for size 8 needles, so I’m assuming that it’s possible. I just can’t figure it out!

Thanks in advance!

#2

If you look at her blog, she’s doing sets of double decreases around the crown…i.e. dec a st, k1, dec a st, but I too can’t get the math to work out… :??

Why not try contacting her? Knitters are knice people, you’ll see. I bet you hear from her within a day or two!

Good Luck!

Diane

#3

Do decreases similar to how you did them for the 80 st pattern. How did you dec with that?

sue

#4

Thanks for the advice! I was kind of scared to resort to that, but I just e-mailed her. We’ll await a reply!

As for the 80 sts beanie, I simply decreased 8 sts every other round. This doesn’t work out evenly for 85 sts, as 8 doesn’t go into 85. But does that matter? I’m not very knowledgeable about how decreasing works, exactly.

I just know that you’re supposed to aim to take out an amount of sts that will go into the amount of sts you have to begin with. (…right?)

Unfortunately, the only numbers that go into 85 are 17 and 5.

#5

You could still dec 8 sts every other round, then dec 5 evenly spaced on the last dec round.

sue

#6

so…

*k9, k2tog … then k5 at the end?
knit around
*k8, k2tog … then k5
knit around
*k7, k2tog … then k5
…
…
…
…
*k1, k2tog … then k5
knit around
*k2tog … and I have 5 stiches left.

I just keep k2tog-ing until I’m down to one stitch?

And if I do this, it’s going to be really weird looking, isn’t it?

#7

That sounds like one way to do it. And I don’t know that it’ll look weird when you’re finished.

sue

#8

[color=indigo]Why not evenly decrease five sts in the first round, knit a round even and then use the regular k6 dec, k6 dec, etc., on the nect round? Or add five sts, do an even round and then K7 dec on the next round?[/color]

#9

Thank you yarnlady!

I think that’s just what I’ll do. I think I would’ve been fine doing it the previous way, but as it’s a Christmas present that I was planning on giving in 2 days, I don’t have time to mess it up.

Thanks for the advice!