Hi I changed my mind about the pattern for a beanie AFTER I had knitted the band. Now I have too many stitches now that I come to shape the top? How can I decrease the number of stitches to have the right amount to follow the pattern to shape? I have 28 stitches too many!
Welcome to the forum!
What is the name of your pattern and designer, and what is the total number of sts on the needle?
If you want to maintain a pattern stitch you’ll have to modify the decreases from these but letting us know the pattern will help.
For a conventional beanie decrease you can look for numbers that divide equally or approximately equally into the total stitch number. For example if you have 96sts that’s divisible by 12 and 8. You could then decrease every 12sts (k10, k2tog) or every 8sts (k6, k2tog) depending on how deep you would like the crown to be.
These tow video help with a different way of decreasing and go into the math needed to calculate the crown depth and rate of decrease.
Thanks for answering. I started on a ‘textured beanie’ from cleckheaton - sorry that’s all it says. Then I swapped to a seed stitch beanie on yarnspirations web site. I started on the cleckheaton one with 114 stitches on the band. Didn’t like the pattern after that so thought I’d swap to the moss/seed stitch one which had 86 stitches. All was good until I got to shaping the top as now I have too many stitches
Maybe this was the original?
You could work a set up round decreasing 4sts evenly distributed around the hat ending with 110sts. Then make decreases every 10sts (k8, k2tog) or 11sts (k9, k2tog).
Alternatively you could work the decreases by dividing the hat into quarters as in the video by decreasing 2sts to 112 on the set up round and then dividing the hat into 28stitch sections. This would have the benefit of 2 decreases either side of the dividing line and maintaining a seed stitch pattern.
The videos give you a nice method for calculating hat height and frequency of decrease rows.
Thank you very much
1 Like