Math - ACK!

More non-India catchup for the knitting-biased. Skip this post if you're all about the travel.

Finished another baby hat for a newborn - one of my typical Gerware hats. Yes, of course you can have the pattern - I'm sorry I didn't get it out before now, as in when The Dulaan Project was still being run by Ryan....but so it goes. Go up to my profile and email me if you'd like the pattern and I'll be happy to email it to you as an MS Word document. Maybe I'll even figure out the PDF thing....er wait a few days in that case. This one was made using doubled sock yarn on size 3 US needles. The yarn is Colinette's "Jitterbug" sock yarn in "Florentine;" a nice rich colorway. I'd link you to it but this is not high-speed access and links are no longer cooperating.



When I started out making these, it was always in Koigu, and I knit the bottom border side-to-side in a long strip with a provisional cast-on, slipping the first stitch of every row to leave a nice edging. I grafted the beginning and the end together, then picked up all along that edging to start garter stitch in the round. I dearly love garter stitch in the round in just about any gauge - it's a nice warm dense fabric and is created by alternating knit and purl rows. If you hate to purl, you won't like this pattern - so - fair warning! One thing about garter stitch in the round - you develop what looks like a seam line at the beginning of the row due to the jog of the next row changing stitches. So to get the decrease lines above the seam to line up - on the setup row you have to count the first stitch of the row as your third stitch. It makes sense in the pattern - honest.



Otherwise, it's an easy little hat and I soon changed to just doing a K2 P2 rib at the bottom and going right into the garter stitch. All thanks to Feral Knitter Janine for reminding me of the balanced double decrease that looks so much better than any other double decrease. I knew it once when I made the precursor to this pattern, the "Igloo Hat," which is double-walled for the most part, all garter stitch, and 4-6 balanced double decreases instead of 3 for a very rounded top. It's very cute and someday when I find where I safely buried it in the stash, I'll show pix and give out that one too. Here are pix of the early ones and the later ones for Dulaan in donated rug yarn by Paternayan in size super chunky.

This one was done by Janine in Koigu. She did the side-to-side strip for the bottom without a provisional cast-on, picked up and knit back and forth for the hat and doing the decreases, then sewed the seam up from base to top. Looks great doesn't it? The side-to-side strip was knit wide enough to be folded up as a cuff on the early ones.











































Janine's dog "Shadow" modeling. If the head won't stay still, maybe the other end will!



I called it Gerware after the Mongolian Ger or Yurt. It has a bit of the same shape and is snug and warm. Here is one of my first ones in Koigu. If you stick with the side-to-side strip for the cuff, you could do some fun things with cables and other texture designs. The pattern will have an addendum for the old way on it.















Paternayan wool rug yarn is actually a lot softer and nicer than you'd think. It comes in gorgeous colors and can be bought locally in Edmonds (the link will show you). I love the pumpkin acorny look of this one for a kids' hat. Most of us would not normally make a conscious choice to us super extra huge rug yarn, but it had been donated to the Dulaan project and we had to use it up. I quite enjoyed it! The lovely and talented Peggy also did a free hat pattern (available here) using it that's very cute!




















You can always do stripes...















...And go a little crazy making them. I tend to knit tight on a smaller needle than would usually be called for on chunky, so these are very firm and crisp and the k2p2 rib doesn't so much pull in a lot as have a cuppy-under look that continues the acorny look of them. It was intended as a kids had but is very cute as adult hat.















The Math - Ack! part is that I was trying to figure out different cast-on numbers for the pattern. My favorite number is 96 because it's divisible by darn near everything. I just change the yarn weight to change size - it's so non-mathy! So I'm in bed late at night and the spouse was - I thought - asleep. I'm there with my little nitelight and a tiny notepad trying to figure out all the numbers between 96 and about 150 that are divisable by both 3 and 4. This is because K2P2 rib needs to be a number divisable by 4 and the tricorn part of the hat needs a number divisable by 3. Other wise, you have to decrease two off after the rib before starting the rest of the hat and why bother if you have a nice number that works with both 3 and 4? A voice from the darkness, "What are you doing?" I mumble embarrassment and description. Mr. Chirpmathie says "Oh! I can help you with that!" (Uh Oh...) So now the math-disabled person (me) knows about LCM (lowest common multiple) and how to quickly figure out multiples of 12 in the range I wanted. I might even retain this knowledge! Trouble is, with the very helpful insight, you also get waaaaaay more math lecture (because math is supposedly so wonderful y'know) than you'd hoped for, so it's "mumble techie, mumble techie, mumble techie, MATH, blah blah blah techie, MATH!" I only seem to retain the parts I need to know. Isn't it called flushing your buffers or something like that?