Morning all… Happy Holidays and New Year …
My qeustion for this am is this…
Started a hat with 102 stitches worsted weight with 8 circulars from some pattern maker and change to 9s after the brim… well it is far to big. I need to downsize the hat and do not have anything smaller than an 8 right now. Any ideas how to start decreasing this hat? And then the number of decreases to do for the very top.
Can I start decreasing the entire hat now and carry that dart look to the top?
thanks all
cheri
If you dec now it’s going to be too floppy at the brim which is where it needs to fit most. You’ll have to start over.
Determine how many sts/inch you have, and what size it needs to be (a couple inches less than the head measurement) and use that number. If you want ribbing it should be an even number of sts for k1p1 rib, or divisible by 4 for k2p2 rib. 90 or 96 might be a good number, depending on how much too large it is now. When you decrease do k8, k2tog, or k10, k2tog around, knit a round plain, then k7 or 9, k2tog, knit one round. Repeat these 2 rounds with one less st between decs. When you get down to 3 or 4 sts betweeen dec, then dec on every round.
Darn I said brim… my error… its just a knit 3 purl 3 band… was thinking trim then typed brim… so its not a floppy thing…so sorry…
Any advise other than starting over…the dang pattern I followed was an 8 then a 9 and that didnt seem to make sense for tightness but I followed it. If all else fails I may just go buy smaller needles…so much time to start it over again
Cheri
Okay, then if you start over, you’d want a multiple of 6, which 90 or 96 work out well. It’s actually easier/faster to start over with less stitches, and if you go down in needle size it may still come out too large or too stiff if you’re using thicker yarn than the pattern calls for. First step is to measure it and your stitches/inch to see how much smaller it needs to be.
For an adult hat in worsted weight I generally cast on somewhere around 80-90. If you want k3,p3 then you would do as Sue says and cast on a multiple of 6.