My First Knitted Hat

I'm giving myself a pat on the bag. I finished my first knitted hat. As you knitters can see, it's a very simple basic hat. Hubs says the hat reminds him of Dr Seuss... Does it?

Here I was knitting the hat - please excuse my sexy legs!

The hat was made in the round using circular needles which I already had some practice with previously. The hat design may be simple but I struggled a bit with it. The first thing which stumped me was for the stockinette stitch, which is the right side - the knit or the purl. Am I rite the knit side is the right side? Later another confusion. I thought the Vs are the purl rows. I believe the Vs are the knit rows. Plus it turned out I did not quite know how to count rows. Thanks to Fiona who pointed me to this site. I'm all cleared up now but nope, I did not go back to undo my mistakes. I'm perfectly happy with an imperfect hat. The same site also has a free beginner knitting ecourse. I signed up for it and it turned out it's too easy for me! Did you hear that? It's too easy for me. That means I've improved!

I didn't do a swatch. <gasp> To be honest, I haven't read up on swatches yet. <I will soonish.> But I did do a practice cast on and a couple of rows of stitches and put it over my daughter's head to see if it fit. That's almost a swatch, rite?

It fits every member of my family!

I almost had a heart attack after I had started on the decrease. It didn't occur to me to try the hat for fit until I had reached the point of no return. I quickly put it over my daughter's head and it wasn't tall enough! I asked myself what's the point of continuing and making a hat that fits no one. The old me would have abandoned the project but the 2018 Jane is this fearless knitter warrior. So I REMOVED the circular needle and ripped the stitches to a point before I started the decrease. OMG. After the horrifying death move, I had to PUT BACK the needles. I did it as best as I could - eeny, meeny miny, moe. I'm very sure some (many) of the stitches were strung back wrong. Whatever. Fearless, rite? One day I'm sure I'll learn how to put the needles back correctly. For my first knitted hat, my brain had reached saturation point.

I used these thick acrylic yarn which I bought from Spotlight during their 30% discount sale. Still it was expensive! Knitting is an expensive hobby! Also, I stupidly bought 4 skeins of yarn. In the end, I only used a small amount of yarn. Another reason to learn swatches. By the way, I find thick yarn a lot harder to knit. I imagined it would be easier but my hands got really tired.

What did you knit this week?