I’ve been making hats for the cancer clinic where I get treatment and this week I finished one that was so much fun and so entertaining that I wanted to share it with you.  It’s similar to the Chunky Long Band Hat but I used worsted weight yarn on size 7 US (4.5 mm) needles.

I started by knitting this cable band to about 18” in length and then by picking up each cast on stitch and knitting it off (and binding off) with the corresponding stitch still on the needle.  This gave me the main body of the hat; it was about 4.5” wide.

Then I grabbed another color and picked up the stitches along one edge, adding a few as I went for ease as this would be the area where you would normally use ribbing.  I wanted it to be flexible enough to be able to pull on easily, but snug enough to hold well - you know, since I wasn’t actually doing ribbing :)

I did 5 rounds of that and it was enough - but when I do this again, I’ll probably add another couple of rounds just to be safe.

Then I picked up the stitches on the other edge.  I fudged these too, adding enough to get a multiple of 8 to simplify the decreasing mathematics (80 stitches total).  I worked about 5 rounds in stocking stitch and then did a bobble every 10th stitch.  On the next round, I started the decreases - K8, K2tog through the back loops.  This made an obvious decrease, but I thought it might be interesting as a design element, so I decided to use it, alternating a decrease round with a knit plain round - except that the stitch over the decrease I also knitted through the back.  I was tickled at how it came out - it seems to have a certain festive air :)

I finished it up at about 8 o’clock last night and you know what - it was a lot of fun.

This isn’t a difficult thing at all but you do have to like picking up stitches (I’ve got no problem with this) or at least not mind it much.  The construction means you can do pretty much anything your heart desires.  Make the center panel lace, do a baby cable rib for the base and maybe carry the baby cables to the top as well.  You can tailor the length of the center panel to the size of the head you’re knitting for and, if it pleases you, you can cast on provisionally and graft the edges together to complete the band.  Me, I don’t do grafting so I did a modified three-needle bind-off but you don’t even have to do that.  You could cast on and bind off in standard fashion and just sew the ends together.  For the bottom band you can, again, do anything you like - ribbing, garter stitch, seed, etc.  Switch to a funky, fluffy yarn and knit a band that looks like fur or fleece.  For the top, you do have to remember that you’re going to be decreasing and factor that into your considerations - but there’s still lots of latitude to play around.

The thing is, you can start with any gauge of yarn and any color you like, any stitch pattern(s) that please you and just fly by the seat of your pants.  In this case, I had bits of yarn I wanted to use up so what I wound up doing was only limited by how much of each color I had.  I really did make it up as I went along.

You can too :)