Just wondering if anyone is familiar with a book called Hat Heads by Trond Anfinnsen? It’s a great visual of a lot of different hats to make with easy to follow patterns…except Trond wants you to use size 4 needles to make a hat to fit an adult size head! I knit tight but wow, to make this hat fit on my head, I am using size 9 needles! And his decrease math is really different. Am I missing something? Do they use different math in Norway? The book is English and published in New York and sold at Amazon and Knit Picks so I am assuming this is for an American audience. If you know this book and have any comments I would appreciate your thoughts. Thanks.
Familiar with Hat Heads?
I don’t know the book, but in looking at posts on Ravelry I see a few others said they knit up small.
What weight yarn are you using? How many stitches were cast on? An adult hat usually has 72-88 unless it’s all ribs or cables in which case you add more because those stitches pull in a lot. Stranded knitting (fair isle) can also tends to make them smaller so you may need more stitches. For any of these methods you’ll need to figure out how many to cast on to stay in pattern.
His patterns call for either Falk, Smart or Alfa. The pattern I am doing is Falk. It called for 90 stitches. After a couple of tries with the stranded knitting I am just doing the hat without it because it wouldn’t fit my subject’s head. (Off the book topic-with fair isle knitting- should I cut the yarn while hat increases to help not make it so tight?)
His decrease formula is number of stitches -12/6
So for 90 stitches thats 13 then k2tog. But I always get 3 stitches left at the end instead of the last 2 to knit together UNLESS I start with k2tog then 13 stitches. I have counted and recounted to make sure I have 90 stitches. Why is this happening? I make socks all the time with decreases and have never had this problem. Following this guys formula is weird. First he explains how to decrease by knitting the number of stitches, then do the decrease but in his pattern language he says k2tog then knit your number of stitches. Either way, I can’t get the numbers to make sense. Any hints as to what I am missing? Like I said, I make socks all the time and have done quite a few hats and have never had this problem with decreasing. Thanks for any input.
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I don’t cut the yarn unless there are more than a few rows in between. I carry it up the side. I have noticed that fair isle gets tighter though…I think it’s less stretchy, too.
As for decreases- That formula should work. You should have 6 decreases across the hat with a k13, k2tog across the hat. :?? For 90 I usually k8, k2tog myself.
Thanks for your help.