Finishing the Hat

Until just recently there was serious gap in my fiber education. Cables. I knew what they were in theory, since somebody had the good sense to explain to me early on that a cable is nothing but a particular set of stitches worked out of order on a particular row. Yet I hadn't put them into a project.

This was in part a reaction to the unfortunate tendency of so many knitwear designers to heap cabling into patterns for men. I suppose it's meant to look butch. Alas, cables in profusion make a sweater very bulky, very heavy, very hot, and very busy. No, thank you.

But after taking Beth Brown-Reinsel's class at Stitches Midwest, and studying that nice Mrs. Thompson's book with all the handsome stitch patterns in it, and seeing what balanced, appealing pieces some knitters have made for themselves, I got curious. Not curious enough to cast on a whole sweater, but curious.

So I made this.



I was going to call it the "Cable Curiosity Hat," but that sounds twee, so I've settled on the "Fear of Cabling Hat." It's an oblique tribute to my parents, who taught me to tackle anything I didn't understand by jumping in and just doing it until it became (you should pardon the expression) old hat. This is a small object, but there are 16 cables in it and collectively they twist 96 times. A fellow would have to be an unredeemed idiot to do something 96 times and still be not quite sure of it.

The pattern, if you even want to call it that, is puerile. Experienced knitters will know what I did just by looking at the picture. For the rest of us, here's a rough sketch.

1. Go get your copy of Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Almanac. If you don't have a copy yet, buy one. It's standard equipment. In fact, if you simply keep knitting long enough it's possible that a copy will materialize on your shelf.

2. Locate the ribbed cable chart in the January chapter. You'll have to hunt carefully, as it's all of seven stitches tall and five stitches wide. Five stitches plus two purl stitches (to separate the cables from each other) is seven stitches. That's your basic motif.

3. I think I'm supposed to tell you to swatch but here's the unvarnished truth: nobody swatches for hats. Not after their first one, anyhow. If you're knitting a standard adult hat with worsted or DK weight yarn on needles that aren't freakishly huge or small, you need somewhere in the area of 100 stitches for a snug fit. Cables pull in a lot, so cast on an extra set of stitches or two.

4. This cable itself is a form of ribbing, so don't rib the brim. Just start the pattern. Instant gratification.

5. Knit and knit and knit. And knit. Cable cable cable cable cable. To figure out on the fly how much you ought to knit before you start the head shaping, go get Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's Knitting Rules! and read the hat chapter.

6. For the head shaping, I wasn't exactly sure what to do so I decided to figure out a rule and apply it ruthlessly and see what happened. That's all a stitch pattern is anyway, right? So I decided to start the decreases in the purl separations between the cables, and to decrease using P2tog instead of K2tog because I'd never seen it done before. I settled on eight decrease points, since most hats I've encountered use 6-8 decreases and 8 fit perfectly into my stitch count.

And so my final decrease rule became:

First decrease round: knit one seven-stitch pattern complete, knit cable stitches of second pattern, P2tog.
Subsequent decrease rounds: knit to within one stitch of established decrease point, P2tog.

By one of those coincidences that abound in knitting, the hat ended exactly as the final knit stitches were eaten by the purl decreases, and this is what I got.



Quite serviceable. And when worn, it has been pronounced "sexy" by a gentleman whose opinions in these matters I trust.

So there you are. Not by any means an original pattern, but it taught me what I wanted to learn and it yielded a hat that fits.

Now I have to go tackle the housework, as it presently looks as though I suffer from a Fear of Doing Dishes, Fear of Making the Bed, and Fear of Sorting Through All the Crap on the Kitchen Table.

But First...

A quick shout out to the 40+ folks who are now on the invite list for the Chicagoland Dulaan Knit-In. Yes, you can still ask for an invite (which doesn't mean you're promising to come, it just means you're interested). Great Sainted Mary Thomas, I was hoping I might get 10 responses. And now we even have people coming in from out of state. Knitters, need I say it, are amazing.

And another shout to the nearly two dozen folks who have offered some really terrific prizes. It's going to be better than Christmas the sacred or secular gift-identified festival of your choice. I'll get to contacting all the donors either today or tomorrow, as my schedule allows. Or maybe I'll make Dolores do it, once she gets home.